Nephilim: The Children of the Labyrinth
by Ellen Weaver
Summary: A sequel to "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come." The King and Queen of the Labyrinth have flouted Winter, and the dread King of the cold season exacts repayment in flesh. The fate of the Labyrinth, and of Sarah and Jareth's children, will be determined as the War of Seasons begins. (Rated M for fantasy violence, swashbuckling, and Dem Pants.)
1. The Fool

**Act I**

**Chapter One: The Fool**

* * *

_The Nephilim were on the Earth in those days—and also afterward— when the sons of God came in unto the daughters of men, and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, people of renown._ Genesis 6:4

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter One:  
**  
"So Alive"—Love and Rockets  
"Everything in Its Right Place"—Radiohead

* * *

The beast snuffed the air, tracking his prey. Human. Human boy, full of meat and the savor of youth. Despite its size, the beast moved quickly, silently, following the boy in the city dark. The boy had been foolish to enter his territory without any propitiatory offerings. Now he was lawful prey.

The boy obviously wanted to die; he was choosing the darkest street, the alleyways, the places where the uncertain city lights refused to penetrate. The beast felt the thrill and the glory of the slow chase under perfect conditions, as the boy turned into a dead-end alley between two locked and silent buildings. He would leap upon the boy. He would tear him apart and drink his blood, and then, belly full, he would sleep until hunger and desire drove him out to kill again. The boy would be a dainty delicacy after years of hard-spiced vagrants, and make for sweet full-bellied dreams.

The beast reached out with his claws and struck sparks from the cinderblock walls, and had to repress a chuckle as the boy peered nervously over his shoulder and stepped forward into the trap with a quicker step. The boy sensed the predator, but could not see it. The beast smiled. Fear would season the meat. This would be quick. It would be certain.

The boy stopped short, looking up at the unexpected chain-link fence blocking the alley. And then he turned and stared out into the dark.

"I know you're there," the boy said. "I'm not afraid."

The predator paused. Humans, in his experience, sometimes attempted bravado in the moments before the kill, before they saw the manner of their death. The boy _was_ afraid—his manchild's voice cracked with it—but there was something else to him as well. Defiance? Anger? The beast shook himself free of the cloaking glamour and growled, stepping out of the shadows, letting the boy _see_.

Tall, but not tall for a man. A body made of muscle and fat and covered with patched and scabby skin, fur ripped out or fallen out from mange. Upright, now, almost a foot taller than the boy, with long, long bent-joint arms that ended in long, long fingers and claws in hands meant to snatch and grab. Yellow teeth. Pulsing red pig's eyes. The beast roared, daubing the pavement with spittle. Slowly. He would go slowly, and enjoy the terror he inspired before he snuffed out the prey's life, perhaps by blood loss, perhaps by strangulation.

The boy went white and took a step back, stopped by the rattling fence.

"Killer," the boy said. He held up his hand in a warding gesture. "Leave me alone, or you die."

The beast tipped his scabby neck back and laughed. His bulk filled the alley. His back arched and he crept slowly closer, claws outstretched to tickle and snatch and rend. Those long stick-pin fingers scratched open one long tear across the boy's winter coat.

The boy screamed.

And then the beast felt a strange, new feeling. Pain. There was intense pain, in his head, in his neck. He grasped at the source of this pain and felt a length of sharp metal extruding from his neck, in a place where no metal should be. Killed. He had been killed.

"I'm sorry," he heard the voice of his murderer say, behind him. It was a warm voice, a gentle voice, even regretful. "But Bee did warn you."

The beast felt the sadness and anger of being cheated, and cried out once in outrage, blood bubbling from its impaled throat. In the next moment, the beast was dead.

The boy gasped for breath, close to hyperventilating, as the swordsman, the monster-killer, wiped his long iron blade clean on the cooling flesh of the beast. "You okay, Bee?" he asked, sheathing his sword against his hip.

"I'm fine," the boy wheezed, staring at the downed creature and bent over, putting his head between his knees.

The swordsman stepped over the beast and felt the boy over for injuries. The blond boy shoved him away. "I said I'm fine!" The swordsman gave him a penetrating glance and then turned to look at the corpse he'd made. Behind him, he heard the boy throw up.

"You should have aimed that for over here," the swordsman said. "Drop some gravy on this roast." He grinned as he heard the boy throw up again, and looked over his shoulder at him.

"Thanks _so_ much for that, Finn," the boy said, wiping his mouth on his sleeve. "Why do I always gotta be the bait?"

The swordsman grinned. "Because you're the pretty one." He clapped the boy on his back and wrapped his red-sleeved arm around the boy's narrow shoulders. "Come on, Bee, I'll buy you a slushie."

As they left the alley, the quiet and hungry inhuman denizens of the city crept closer to feed on the fresh meat left so tantalizingly alone. So the eater became the eaten. Even the bones would be carried away, to be gnawed through. Even the blood would be licked clean away. It had happened before. It would happen again. Finn hummed the Doxology under his breath. World without end, city without sleep, a labyrinth of commerce and magic. Amen, amen.

Feeling their approach, Finn led Bee quickly away, out into more well-lit and populated places, places where a dark-skinned horned man in a long red coat, and a pale blond youth with a naïve face could eat and drink and discuss urban hunting without raising any interest. The city's darkness had seen it all, but Finn didn't want Bee to see the final result of their night's work. The city was blasé; the boy was innocent.

"I mean it," Bee said, the cherry slushie staining his lips and tongue red. Finn knew if he were to kiss that mouth now, it would taste sugar-sweet, perhaps stain his own mouth, too. Bee licked his lips and daintily picked at the paper tray of nachos before them on the metal table. "Why do I always have to be the bait? If I'd had a sword—"

"If you had a sword, you would have gotten too close." Bee had pulled a small sketchbook from his pack and was carefully drawing a picture of the beast. The size of a calf on all fours, in shape not unlike a sloped-back hyena, or a gorilla. No fur. Finn flicked the drawing around to his perspective perused it a moment, then took Toby's pen. _Flesh Shuck_, Finn labeled the entry.

"What about a gun?"

Finn made a rude noise. "Do tell me, Bee, what is this family fetish with firearms? If you'd had a gun, you would have fired it."

"Damn right," Bee said, grabbing a particularly cheese-rich chip.

"At the creature." Finn added some notations about approximate weight and standing height.

"Duh." Bee ate, and then sucked a bit of grease from his fingertips.

"And at me. I was standing right behind it, remember." He spun Bee's notebook back to him, smiling at the youth with a fond expression.

"I wouldn't have hit you." Bee sucked at his straw.

"You could have. You think, honey-Bee, that a bullet cares where it goes?"

"And a sword does?" Bee said petulantly.

"A sword does," Finn said darkly, caressing the hilt at his right hip. "My swords care, very much, where they go."

"So let me use one," Bee insisted, slapping his cup down on the table.

"No," Finn said with finality. "I know what," he said, with sudden inspiration. "Let's go visit your sister. That'll cheer you up." _And me_, he thought. _Toby, you're adorable but it's exhausting keeping you both entertained and unhurt._ He kept the thought hidden from his face.

"You just want to see _him_," Bee said. Finn grinned. Bee's jealousy was naked and sweet. "The Goblin King."

"Your brother!" Finn cajoled, still smiling.

"Brother-in-_law_," Bee said. His red lips curled into a reluctant answering smile. "Okay. I guess."

"I thought you liked His Majesty," Finn said, finishing off the nachos and snagging Bee's unfinished drink for good measure. "Don't you like him?"

"I do," Bee sighed. "It's just sometimes… I don't like the way he looks at you. Like you're something he owns."

Finn reached out and took the boy's hand and held it gently. His golden eyes lit with an emotion somewhere between remorse and desire. "But he _does_ own me, Toby. The Goblin King owns me, body and soul."

"That's slavery," Bee said, trying to jerk his hand away, but Finn was stronger, and had practice keeping his grip. This was a conversation they'd had before, in bits and pieces, well-worn as a familiar piece of clothing.

"Some vows last forever," Finn said quietly. His index finger stroked gently over the boy's palm. "What's promised is promised. What's said is said." He released Bee's hand sooner than he would have liked.

"I could talk to him," Bee said. "Let him understand. It's not fair for him to—"

Finn laughed and finished off the last of the boy's sweet drink. "Fair! You know, I do believe you're the one person on Earth or Under who could say that to him and get away with it. _Fair._ Feh. Finished those nachos?" Bee nodded. "Good. We can catch the subway and be at the Goblin Market before dawn if we hurry."

"Or… we could go see my parents," Bee asked reluctantly.

Finn hid a sigh. He disliked humdrum humanity, and Bee's parents were as hum as drum came. Though Bee had apparently won their permission to leave school for a semester to follow Finn about the darker corners of New York City, and though they'd behaved themselves with decorum at Sarah's wedding—at which they were the most unusual guests, being themselves so human, so normal—Finn had an inkling they might not be best pleased to find a handsome dark-skinned man who wore swords under his long coat as their son's chaperon through the wilds of New York City. They might ask specific questions about their mutual activities, which included slicing and dicing up monsters, protecting the humdrum human beings who had no idea what death they might find if they turned down the wrong street at the wrong time. They might make other assumptions, and Finn didn't like being found guilty of sins he hadn't committed.

He hadn't so much as kissed the boy yet, nor laid a naked hand to that soft and tender opened-armed flesh, despite how much Bee obviously longed for him. Bee wanted Finn the way a cavity wanted an ache. Finn had been resolute, but he wasn't sure if, condemned by the accusing looks and carnal assumptions of Mr. and Mrs. Robert Williams, he might just couple with the boy out of sheer contrariness. And then, oh, disaster, unless Sarah relented…

All of these thoughts circled through his mind in a few seconds, and when he responded to Bee's suggestion, it was with no break in the conversation.

"It'll be good for you to see your parents," Finn said. "They'll be overjoyed to fuss over you. Cook you some wholesome food. Wash your undershorts."

Bee blushed. "That was just the one time!" He'd peed himself on their first hunt, when the kelpie slithered out of the Hudson and laid cold fingers on him. Tumor-ridden, hateful and hungry, it had intended to drown the boy. Finn, of course, had had other plans.

"Poor kid," Finn cooed. "Yes, let's definitely take you home tonight. You need your own bed, and your own mother to tuck you in. Not bad old Finn with his monsters."

"I'm not a baby!" Bee said fiercely.

"Yes," said Finn, tenderly tugging a long wavy strand of the boy's hair. "Yes, you are."

* * *

On their way to the Labyrinth, as the rattlesnap of the subway car rocked him to sleep, Toby pressed is face against Finnvah's shoulder. He felt the older man wrap his arm and the edge of his coat around him, holding him warm and close.

_I love you, Finn_, Toby thought.

The Labyrinth and the nurseryland dangers of the Goblin King's realm were Disneyworld compared to the wonders he'd seen in the night city with Finn. The Labyrinth was where Sarah lived now. As he began to fall asleep, Bee remembered his sister.

Sarah was almost his first memory. If he tried, he could recapture it. She was standing on a great height, far above him, and she opened her arms and flew. She flew to him.

Another memory unfolded from the first. Cold winter air and the sound of Christmas music blaring tinnily out of shops and stores always made him feel this memory, even if he refused to recall any images. Bee let it take him now, smelling Finn, feeling the prickle of his wool coat against his cheek, knowing he was safe.

It was the night before Linda and Jeremy's funeral. That was what he dreamed. Dad and Mom had insisted Sarah stay at their house. And all Toby could do was see how utterly miserable Sarah looked when she thought no one could see her. Mom had mentioned in passing to Dad that it would be a good thing if Sarah could only find a way to cry. Toby didn't know if that would be a good thing or not. He just didn't want his sister to feel so… lost. So he took something from his room and tiptoed through the eleven-o'clock-silent house and went to find her. He found her in the kitchen, polishing off a bottle of wine, more than half-drunk. She had given Toby a wobbly smile that faded when she saw what he carried.

"Who've you got there, Toby?" Sarah asked. And Toby pushed the stuffed bear into her arms.

"Wan Sue," Toby said gravely. "Have him. He's my best thing. I think you need him more than I do right now."

Sarah held the bear out at arm's length and stared at it. The fur was stiff from repeated washings and worn away from affectionate hugging, but his red ribbon was as jaunty as ever. Sarah had stared at the faded yellow teddybear and then put it to her face and sobbed violently for a full minute. The tears stopped like turning off a tap, and then she'd half-fallen off her stool and clutched Wan Sue in one arm and Toby with both.

"I can't believe this," Sarah said, looking at Wan Sue and wiping her eyes with one of Mom's just-for-important-company embroidered serviettes. She uncorked another bottle of wine and poured Toby a generous measure, and twice that again for herself.

"Mom'll have a bird if she finds out I've been drinking," Toby said carefully.

"What Karen doesn't know won't hurt her. Drink up. I have a story for you."

"What kind of story?" Toby had asked. He always liked Sarah's stories, the games she made up, the toys she played with that slowly but inevitably ended up being his toys. But something in her tone and in the general situation told Toby that this wouldn't be any fairy-tale.

"This is the story of how I gave you Wan Sue." She cuddled the slightly-damp bear against her breast. "But when he was mine, his name was 'Lancelot' and he wasn't even my best thing. This is a true story, Toby. I need you to listen. Once upon a time, when I was just about your age now, I had to baby-sit you all the time. And I was a spoiled child, and I wanted everything for myself, and I was nasty and selfish. But what no one knew was that the King of the Goblins had been watching me, and when I made a bad wish, his goblins came and took you away…"

It was the best, most frightening story Toby had ever heard. He drank automatically as Sarah fell into her narrative, dragging his imagination with her, as she described the challenge, the chase, the reversals of fortune meted out by the Labyrinth and the Goblin King, and her final confrontation with her adversary that ended in both of them being whisked away back home, safe and sound… but perhaps not unchanged. "And then I gave you Lancelot. You couldn't say his name right, but his name was your first word. 'Wan-soo-whoa.' Wan Sue. And you loved him better than I did. It was easier to let go of things I didn't need once I'd run the Labyrinth.

"Things were different after that," Sarah said, splitting the very last drops of their second bottle between Toby's glass and hers. "_I_ was different, after that." She rested her head on her fist and smiled sadly, closing her eyes. "Now's the place where you ask me if the story's really true."

"I know it's true," Toby said. He spread Mom's fancy napkin out on the island-top like a canvas and dipping his finger in the red wine. He drew a face with the rough unthinking slashes of a Zen painting. Spiked hair, beaked nose, domineering spare mouth. He remembered, even in the dream, how easy it had been to capture that likeness, an ease that had eluded him ever since. "That's him, isn't it? That's the Goblin King."

"Yes, that's Jareth," Sarah said quietly. She ran her fingers over the stained fabric like she was touching a living face. And then she clawed the napkin into her fist as the wine-paint bled out into random patterns signifying no shape at all. She looked at Toby, and he saw that her tears were threatening again, but not for her mother. "I called for him two days ago. I wanted to wish myself away. I wanted all this to stop. But he never came. So_ I_ was wondering if it was all true." She tossed the napkin at the sink. "If he's real, he despises me."

"No he doesn't," Toby insisted, the wine in his belly making him certain. He grabbed Sarah's hand. "Why would he?"

"Because I'm despicable," Sarah said. She stood up on wobbly legs and handed Toby back Wan Sue. "Time for bed," she said. "Tomorrow's another terrible day."

She'd paused, swaying and slightly drunk, and looked back at him.

"It's not a story to tell Karen and Dad," she said.

"Duh," Toby said. They smiled at each other and she staggered out.

Toby didn't think Sarah ever knew that he followed just behind her as she made her way up the back stairs to the guest room, once her childhood bedroom. He'd been afraid of her falling down drunk those stairs, of dying. She'd fallen on the bed instead, face-first, and Toby had taken off her shoes, and tucked Wan Sue under her shoulder before he turned off the light.

The next morning, she'd stood as chief mourner at her mother's funeral, dry-eyed and straight-backed, as if none of it had happened. She didn't seem to remember their conversation at all, or at least she gave no sign.

She'd left the bear behind, propped up in his usual place on Toby's bed.

* * *

"Wake up, Bee," Finn said quietly. "Our stop is next."

Of course, Finn had had his way, Bee groused fondly to himself as they walked up the subway steps into the Goblin Market. In the square, vendors were just setting up their wares in the gloomy day. A few greeted Finn with a friendly wave and a call of his name. A few others spat and turned away. Finn paid the latter no mind and escorted the boy through the wide plaza and into the castle proper.

Bee hadn't wanted to go home and see Mom and Dad, not at least until Thanksgiving or Christmas, when there hopefully would also be a very pregnant Sarah and the enigmatic, glittery Goblin King to keep Mom distracted. Bee hadn't told his mother exactly what he was up to during his year off from college, because she wouldn't understand. Or, scratch that, she wouldn't want to understand. Magical creatures and a ghetto Harry Potter lifestyle would most certainly be on the do-not-call list for Karen Irene Williams.

"There are certain conditions I have," his father had said, a few days after the wedding party in the Labyrinth, when Bee had broached the subject of Finn's invitation to spend a year exploring New York with him, seeing all the strange and wonderful things there were to see. "First, you do this and you're doing it completely without my financial support. You're not going to spend a year living it up on your tuition money like some sort of half-assed Prodigal Son. Second, you'll call home once a week. Tuesdays at 9 PM sharp. You miss a call, and I will pull all my vast tapestry of strings to find you, since you'll be needing rescue, because there's no other reason you'd ever miss the opportunity to reassure your mother and I of your health and wellbeing. Third, if you ever need me to bail you out, literally or figuratively, your trip is over and you come home. Gratefully, quietly. Agreed?"

"Yes, sir," Toby replied, hands clenched behind his back. "That means… I can do it?"

"It means I'll talk to your mother about it and be a little vague in some of the details. But if she agrees you should be allowed to take a year off school…I don't see why you can't."

"Don't tell her about Finn," Toby had said nervously. Karen still referred to her stepdaughter's husband as a 'foreign noble' whenever she was asked about her stepdaughter in polite company.

Bee skewed a glance over at Finn. Definetely foreign, despite his claim to American citizenship. Definitely not human. Definitely something strange and beautiful and alien and dangerous, and definitely someone of whom Mom would not approve, especially not for her one-and-only son.

"I won't tell her about Finn," Robert had said, and given his youngest child a cagy look. "I won't tell you not to do anything illegal, but avoid needles and prostitutes and people on the make. You may wake up one day and be forty and enjoying the thought of a comfortable next forty years. Illegal activity can fuck that up for you." Toby had been rather taken aback by his father's use of profanity, but he nodded, holding the advice close. "One final thing," his father had said. "Please come home for Christmas and your birthday, Tobias. And when you see your sister, remind her to come home, too. I miss you both something terrible at the holidays."

"I will, Dad," Toby said. "I promise."

And that had been that. Bee wondered to himself, looking over at Finn again, if what they'd been doing together in the last three months qualified as illegal. He looked over his shoulder at the plaza in the Goblin City and then into the myriad shifting corridors waiting inside the Castle at the Center of the Labyrinth, and decided there were probably ten thousand unwritten laws against monster-hunting, but none written. He resisted the babyish urge to hold Finn's hand. He was nineteen, but Finn still treated him as if he were a child. He wondered why, because sometimes the sexual energy between them seemed to crackle and light up the city streets. He wondered if he were crazy, believing the attraction was mutual. Had his father or the Goblin King had a discreet word with Finn regarding the enforcement of Bee's increasingly chafing virginity?

The throne room was thick with goblins gamboling and singing and drinking. At the apex of all this chaos sat Jareth, the Goblin King, lounging on his throne and occasionally snapping off Polaroid pictures with a benevolent look on his strange face. The goblins grew quiet in a breaking wave as Bee and Finnvah came forward, but Jareth made no sign that he saw them until they were standing at the lip of the recessed pit before the throne. Jareth raised the camera and took their picture with a flash that momentarily blinded Bee.

"Your Majesty," said Finn, executing a complicated bow that was somewhere between a gesture of worship and a curtsey. Bee looked sideways at Finn and knew those graceful calisthenics were beyond his ability, and instead bowed awkwardly at the waist.

"Such ceremony," Jareth said, smiling, straightening on his throne and flapping the ejected photo between his fingers. "I'm not holding court today. No need for formalities, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix." His tone was reassuring, but Bee had the feeling that despite what the Goblin King said, he would have been irked if Finn hadn't made the proper gesture of humility. "And you need never bow to me, Toby. Unless you're interested in swearing fealty to me?" His smile became if anything slightly pointed and predatory. Toby knew he should have felt uneasy, but didn't. He smiled back and shook his head. He liked Jareth, for all his weirdness. Slowly the goblins began to sing and swear and shuffle around again, endlessly distracted and distracting, and the throne room returned to its customary social chaos.

"We came to see Sarah," Finn said cheerfully. "It's not an official visit."

"But you have things to tell me, nevertheless. We must talk," the Goblin King said, kicking his feet up in the air and getting up from his throne with a bounce. He traversed the perimeter of the pit, benevolently kicking a few slow goblins out of his way, and stood before them. Even down off the raised dais, he seemed to loom over Finn like a thunderhead. _Heels_, Bee thought, observing the Goblin King's boots. _He wears heels. He's not really that tall_. But it was more than the lift of his shoes that made Finn look at the Goblin King the way he did. Bee's eyes skittered away from the Goblin King's revealing trousers. "Here you go," Jareth said, pushing the dim picture into Bee's hands, who took it with surprise. Jareth came between them, hooked them both by the elbows and strolled them out into the corridors as the goblin chaos continued on unabated.

"Where is Sarah?" Finn asked. Bee tried to peep around the Goblin King's narrow chest to look at him, but they were all walking too quickly to make the attempt.

"My lady wife is sleeping in. Sleeping into what I'm not particularly sure. Perhaps a melon of some kind, or a second moon." Jareth halted before a massive pair of doors and dropped Finn's arm. "In there."

"You aren't coming in with me?"

"What, and wake that dragon? I think not, noble knight. You do it." Jareth laughed an insane laugh and pushed Finn at the doors.

"I thought you said we were going to talk!" Finn said, as Jareth dragged Toby with him down one of the endless corridors of the castle.

"We will. Later! Come, young Toby!" Bee felt uneasy. He didn't particularly want to be separated from Finn, but it seemed a much better option than being sent in to visit his cranky, pregnant sister while Jareth and Finn engaged in the type of courtly, flirtatious dialog that had been the hallmark of their last visit.

Bee was very conscious of being travel-stained and unbathed and tatter-clothed and smelly and itchy, linked arm-in-arm with Jareth, who seemed to be perpetually well-dressed and comfortable no matter what mess he surrounded himself with. _No wonder Finn likes him so much_, he thought. _They're_ _just alike_. _I wish I was like them_.

"You are, you know," Jareth said, as they rounded a bend and tripped quickly up some steps. They curved up and up; they were climbing a tower.

"I'm what now?" Bee asked, wanting some clarity.

"Attractive to him." The Goblin King stropped at the top of the stairs; they were in a faceted glass dome that had already absorbed some of the heat of the day. The tower room was sparsely furnished with a tatty old armchair and a rickety endtable; it smelled of stale cigarettes. Jareth cranked open a window and stared out, then pulled back the tattered cuffs of his left sleeve and looked at his watch. The room cooled quickly as November air spilled in.

"Are you a mind-reader?" Bee asked. "I feel like Pig Pen, I feel like I'm twelve, that's how attractive I feel. So how do you know?"

Jareth tilted his head and stared down at Toby's hand. "Because it's something I can see."

Bee looked down and saw he was still clutching the underdeveloped picture. His thumb had smudged a deep yellow mark on one corner, but it was still clear despite that flaw. There he was, in the picture, looking babyish and worried and tired and dirty. In the picture, his eyes refused to look the taker in the face. Bee frowned, expecting Finn's eyes to have met Jareth's, to be boldly looking forward. But instead Finn's golden eyes were glancing at Bee, with a look of desire and pride so intense it took his breath away. He blushed and clutched the picture tighter. He looked up at Jareth, expecting to feel more embarrassed, more exposed. But the Goblin King was carefully neutral, even kindly distant.

_He's on my side_, Bee realized gladly. He found it easier to breathe, like an extra weight had been lifted from his backpack. He slipped the picture into his pocket, next to his phone.

Jareth opened the drawer of the table and pulled out a pack of cigarettes, an ashtray, an Altoids tin, and a lighter. "Don't tell Sarah," he said, lighting one up in clenched teeth. "She'll be jealous." Jareth blew smoke out the window, and followed it with his eyes. He looked at his watch again.

"What're you looking at?" Bee asked, coming up beside Jareth and staring out. He couldn't see anything unique, just the Labyrinth. The Labyrinth was pretty impressive, Bee had to admit, but there wasn't anything particularly unusual going on. At least not that he could see. The Goblin City looked like a doll's village, and there was a parkland beyond that, all gold and red leaves, and beyond that a series of interlocking indeterminate maze-walls that seemed to extend to the stormy-looking horizon. Bee casually reached for Jareth's cigarettes, intending to smoke one, but Jareth slapped his hand without looking.

"I'm checking the time," Jareth said. "What time do you have, young Toby?"

Bee checked his watch resentfully. "Ten," he said.

"New York time? I wonder," Jareth said. "Is it cold in your city, Toby?"

"At night, yeah," Bee said. He blushed to think. It had snowed in mid-October, and he and Finn had made their makeshift beds over a subway exhaust grate that gave out intermittent heat which only made him feel the cold more strongly. Finn had called him into his sleeping bag, first offering and then demanding that the boy come in beside him, stop being foolish, human beings freeze to death all the time in this city. And Bee had, resisting only because he wanted to be close to Finn so badly. Warmed by Finn's body under the warmth of his coat and their trash-bedding, it had been a species of Heaven, but he had been ashamed at how obviously aroused he was. "No matter, no mind," Finn had said, tucking his leg over Toby's thighs like a mother cat. "Just get warm and sleep." And Bee had, but Finn most likely had not, keeping watch over his flock of one by night. "Yeah, it gets cold. Rain. Snow."

"And the leaves in the Central Park, they're no longer green?"

"What are you getting at?" Bee asked. He looked up at Jareth, worried by his worry.

Jareth stubbed his cigarette out and took a mint, and offered the box to Bee.

"Winter is coming to the Labyrinth. That's the long and short of it." Rain began to spit out of the grey sky, cold rain with a hint of snow to it. Jareth looked out the window one more time and cranked it shut. "A change in the air," he said, brooding.

"I get that it's a problem for you, but I don't understand how," Bee said. "Winter comes after summer and Fall. That's the way it is."

"Your coat is torn quite badly," Jareth remarked conversationally, putting his smoking accessories away. "Would you like it mended, or would you like a new coat?"

"I'd like a new everything," Bee said, "And a hot shower on top of that. So why is Winter a problem?" he asked, insistent.

"Because it's something I can't see," Jareth said. His black eye and his blue one were lit with some nameless anxiety. "Because it's _never happened before_."

* * *

**Next… Chapter Two: "The Empress"  
**

* * *

_Author's Note:__ This story is a sequel to my novella "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come." Although I'm going to do my best to ensure that new readers can understand this story, there are several key original characters, such as Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix and John Company, who've been introduced to readers in that first story. "Kingdom Come" also discloses how Jareth and Sarah arrived at their unusual marriage. These events begin approximately three months after the conclusion of that story. _

_I'm really excited about this story. There will be twists and turns and surprises-for you, and for me too. I've got Frances Osgood riding beta shotgun on this one. If there are spelling or continuity or reference errors, I assure you the fault is mine._

_And like "Kingdom Come," I've got a thematic soundtrack for this story. Please feel free to download and enjoy the music that goes with each chapter. -E.W._


	2. The Empress

**Chapter Two: The Empress**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Two:  
**  
"What I Am"—Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians  
"November Rain"—Guns N' Roses

* * *

"Announce thyself, varlet!" barked a familiar voice as Finn entered the antechamber to the Queen's apartments, and he felt a knobbed staff poke threateningly into his ribs. "None may pass without my permission!"

"Sir Didymus!" Finn said with genuine delight. "It's me!"

Didymus lowered his staff carefully, tilting his head to stare at Finn with his one good eye, brows lowered in concentration. "Ah, yes. Sir… I can't quite place the name." He clipped his weapon back to his baldric, livery now green and gold with a golden key embroidered over a peach, Sarah's coat of arms.

"You don't remember me?" Finnvah said, so disappointed that the reproach came out before he could stop himself. The little knight's loyal steed, the sheepdog Ambrosius, remembered Finn better, jumping up and pressing his paws against Finn's chest and giving a low, delighted woof. Finn ruffled Ambrosius's ears before stepping back and getting on one knee to talk to Sir Didymus. "Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix? I was seven years your faithful companion. You remember how we pushed back the great Night Troll incursion into the Goblin Market?"

"Sir Finnvarrah!" Didymus exclaimed, eye lighting with recognition. "Of course, of course. The dim lighting plays havoc with the eyesight." Ambrosius pressed against Finn's side, and he patted the dog.

"You've come up in the world, Sir Didymus," Finn said respectfully. "My compliments."

"It is an honor to serve. Truly, Queen Sarah is the most gracious and noble lady who has ever drawn breath."

"She would have to be, to have the valiant Sir Didymus as her personal guard. May I have your permission to see her?" Finn's plan had been to pump his sometime brother-in-arms for information regarding Sarah's health and wellbeing. But Sir Didymus, who in their early days together had suffered the occasional lapse in memory, seemed to be growing increasingly senile. _Fortunately_, Finn thought, unconsciously rubbing his ribs where the little knight had bruised him, _he's still strong in body_. Ambrosius might be more helpful, but Finn didn't speak dog.

"You wish to enter my Lady's private chambers?" The little knight looked slightly outraged.

"On the command of His Majesty," Finn said firmly. It wasn't even a lie. "May I have your permission?"

Sir Didymus gave him a fierce look. "You must swear to treat her as the apple of your eye, precious and fragile." Finn repressed a snort. Sarah Williams might be many things, but fragile she was not. But then, Sir Didymus always did have a blind spot for the less-than-gentle attributes of the gentle sex.

"I do so swear, Sir Didymus."

The little knight gave him an evaluating look. _Senile doesn't mean stupid. _Finn remembered, and wondered if his vagabond lifestyle had left him looking disreputable to his old friend.

"Yes, you may have my permission. Only you mustn't wake her if she sleeps. Their Majesties have been very clear on this point. Her delicate condition..." Sir Didymus, if he could have blushed, would have been blushing. "Ahem. Enter." The little knight reached up and pulled back the great door for Finn, who felt some pride in being found worthy. _Ah, Sir Didymus_, Finn thought. _How terrible it must be, growing old. How can anyone stand it?_

But all other thoughts left his head as the door closed behind him and he saw the queen.

Sleeping under satin bedclothes under a canopy of gauze and silver stars, Sarah Williams looked every bit a fairy-tale princess, waiting for the handsome prince to come and kiss her awake. Finn approached her diffidently, circling around the perimeter of the room. Her dark hair was spread thick as jam over her pillows. The down coverlet and sheets had been pressed down to her hips, and the thin cotton nightgown she wore couldn't conceal the rounded dome of her pregnant belly, or the pink blush of her breast-tips.

Finn felt shaken by her loveliness, and rejoiced in her tranquility. In all senses but one, he felt himself swell with love at the sight of her, and all that she kept his breath quiet and his footsteps quieter as he approached, remembering Sir Didymus' instructions.

The fairy-tale illusion was shattered when she broke wind. Finn pressed his fist to his mouth but couldn't keep his outraged laughter in. She opened one thick-lashed eye and glared at him. "What did you _eat_? The Bog of Stench?" Finn asked, coughing the words out between hysterical whoops of laughter.

"You'd better hope I'm still dreaming," Sarah said serenely, voice full of loving fondness. "Because I'm going to murder you for waking me up." She threw a pillow at him with deadly aim from prone position.

"I didn't wake you up. _You_ woke you up, Tooting Beauty!" He tossed the pillow back at her and dissolved into giggles. He had to bend over and rest his hands on his thighs to catch his breath.

"It wasn't me, it was Yimmil," Sarah said, yawning and sitting up.

"No-Sir-Lord!" piped up a familiar voice, its owner excavating himself from the bedclothes. It was the little goblin. Sarah made a face as she helped him, folding the satin comforter back, dislodging a few books in the process. A Chirurgeon's Compendium of the Functions of Women. What to Expect When You're Expecting. Yimmil bounded forward, radiating stink-lines.

"I miss you, and then I remember your skills at diplomacy," Sarah said, languidly stretching. "Is this any way to greet a Queen?"

"Yeah!" Yimmil agreed, as if he weren't the maker of loud and rude noises, moving over to the cavernous fireplace and moving a kettle onto the hob.

"Gracious madam, no. My sincere apologies." Finnvah sobered and performed the complicated bow given to nobility in their own domains. It required quite a lot of gluteal fortitude, but Sarah only looked him over with satisfaction as she slithered off the bed and wrapped herself in a green dressing-gown. Her round little belly peeped out through the folds like an egg in grass. When he felt he'd bowed long enough, he attempted to rise, but Sarah's expression turned to irritation.

"Not yet," she said wickedly, moving over to the grate and settling herself comfortably down in an armchair. "You stay just where you are for the moment." Yimmil brought her a mug of tea and a doll's cup for himself, and sat on the ottoman between Sarah's feet. They sipped at the same time, giving Finnvah identical looks of gleeful opprobrium.

Finnvah gritted his teeth, hoping his endurance was stronger than Sarah's patience. It wasn't a near thing, but she had had finished her tea before she allowed him to stand. Sarah held out her mug. "Arise, and fill this cup for me, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. And top off Yimmil's too. And then you can have some for yourself and talk with me."

"Us!" declared the little goblin, scratching at his furry ear.

"Us," Sarah said fondly to the goblin. "Unless you'd prefer to go get breakfast." Yimmil shoved his teacup at Finnvah.

"Breakfast, Yes-Ma'am-Lady! For him too. I get!" Yimmil left through a goblin-sized judas gate in the doors.

"The Goblin King lets goblins into his bedchamber?" Finnvah asked, as he refilled Sarah's mug. There was only one other cup available on the mantel, incongruously banal against the marble carvings of shela-ne-gigs and green-men. Yellow with red letters: "BIG BAD DADDY." Obviously Jareth's mug, but seldom used. Finn blew a thin film of glittery dust out of it and poured himself a hot drink.

"The Goblin King does whatever his queen asks," Sarah replied smoothly. The expression on her face was strange. It was not a smile. "He's spoiling me rotten. He gives me practically anything I want." She put down her mug and squirmed against her chair. Finnvah reached over and adjusted the pillow at her back. _And no wonder_, Finn thought. _You've given _him_ more than he ever hoped to ask for._ Sarah leaned back and sighed with comfort. He took note of her skin and her nails, her hair, her flesh. She glowed with life and health, and the smug satisfaction of a woman who knows herself to be truly beautiful.

Sarah interrupted his train of thought. "Where's my brother, Finnvah? Why isn't he here, too? You promised to keep him safe."

"I left him in the rather capable hands of his brother-in-law," Finn replied. He unbuckled his sword-belt and hung it over the second chair, and sat in it, sipping his tea. "You look marvelous, Queen Sarah. It does my eyes good to drink you in."

"Fresh," Sarah said, batting Finn's feet with hers. "Don't change the subject."

"Which subject was that, Your Radiance? The gloriousness of your beauty, like May-Day in November? The green of spring in your eyes? Your belly, a ship that sails stately over dry land? Verily, even trumpets announce your presence—"

"The king delivers whatever his queen asks, and that includes your head on a platter, No-Sir-Lord. Or your dick in a box." Sarah's grin became wicked. "How's Toby? Is he well? Unhurt? …Untouched?"

"Yes, yes, and literally no but figuratively yes," Finnvah replied. He eyed his tea speculatively. Uncaffeinated. He might as well be drinking hot water. He sneered down his mug. "But that last's getting harder to handle, pardon the phrasing."

"He's a child," Sarah sternly reminded him. "You're old enough to be his father. You should be able to manage just fine."

"Frankly, Queen Sarah, I'd rather face down another knucklavee with nothing but a garden hose than head Bee off anymore. Hell might have no fury like a woman scorned, but Earth knows no desire like a teenage boy who wants to fuck. It's not…"

"Were you about to say 'fair' to me?" Sarah said with dangerous sweetness.

Finn sighed. "Touché. But I was going to say 'fair to Bee.'"

"He's not ready," Sarah said. "He's not old enough."

"Both he and I would disagree," Finn said, "I wish you'd change your mind. Speaking of mood swings and abruptly changing the subject, how are you feeling?"

"Good, but very tired. I'm tired all the time. I feel… full. Like… I'm running a race and winning. But… it's definitely hard work," Sarah admitted. "Harder than I thought it would be. And my moods are all over the place. The goblins are terrified of me. I think Jareth is, too." Finn stood up and refilled her mug with the last of the kettle. "I'm sorry I made you bow so long. I was mad that Toby didn't come to see me right away and I took it out on you." She sipped her tea gratefully and Finn shrugged. "No, it's like that," Sarah said, frowning. "I can see how utterly insane I am, and know I'm acting like a crazy person, but it's like I can't stop myself. I've got no self-control. And I'm crackling with power. I feel like I should be on fire. Like I could do anything. Anything at all. Except…"

He squatted down by Sarah's chair and looked up at her face. "Except what? What can I do for you, Queen Sarah? Anything on Earth or Under."

"I'm afraid," Sarah said flatly. She gave a thousand-yard stare, and in that moment Finn could see what she would look like when she was fifty.

"Well, what are you afraid of?" Finn asked, trying to keep his tone jovial. In himself, he felt some unease, as if her fear were contagious.

"I don't know, I don't know!" Her eyes filled with tears and Finn patted her knees, feeling helpless. "I ask Jareth if there's anything I should know, and he gives me some sort of fantastic present or brings me food… or he disappears. And I stay here in this room and rot, when there's always something in the back of my head telling me to put on shoes and run and run away from here! But I can't run. I'm too fat." She snuffled a laugh and Finn gave her his second-best handkerchief. She daubed her eyes and blew her nose, and twisted the cloth between trembling hands.

"Is there anything I can do for you?" Finn asked, reminding himself to make sure he double-folded the handkerchief when she remembered to give it back to him.

"An OB-GYN?" Sarah said wildly, as if it were a funny, impossible joke. "That'd be good."

He suddenly remembered the books that had tumbled out of the Goblin King's side of the bed, and dismay punched him so strongly in the chest that he rocked back on his heels. "Sarah… Gog-Magog, is your husband intending to deliver your baby himself? Or getting some halfassed goblin quack to play midwife?"

"I think the goblins reproduce by budding," Sarah said wearily. "And every time the word 'doctor' gets brought up, Jareth looks like somebody pinched him, so I stopped asking."

Fin stood up, swearing a blue streak, looking for something to kick or throw.

"Are you finished?" Sarah asked sternly. "The walls have ears and I don't need the goblins learning that kind of language!"

"Apologies," Finn said abruptly, his mind still turning this problem over. He folded his hands behind his back. "You never wanted to be pregnant," he said, as diffidently as he could manage. "You have some store of magic at your disposal. If you wanted, you could…"

"No," Sarah said passionlessly. "I already decided against that." She hitched a sigh, and the glow that emanated from her seemed to fade a bit. She looked Finnvah in the eyes. "You said… you told me, it might be something that I had to do, to save Jareth. And you were right." She looked down at her belly as if it were an uncomfortable piece of clothing she couldn't remove. "I thought about … getting rid of it. But I decided it wouldn't be fair. I owe this baby life. I bought Jareth's life with hers. Or his. A life for a life." She looked at Finnvah again. "He wants this baby so much. It's too late to turn back now." Her belly visibly jumped from a kick, and then another, as if the life inside were aware of the conversation, and wanted to be present. Sarah rubbed her bump, wedding-ring glinting on her finger. "Shush now," she told it. "Nobody's turning you out, and breakfast is on the way."

"I'll go right now," Finn said, standing up and buckling his swords back at his hips.

"I don't want you to go now!" Sarah shrieked. "You just got here!" She leaned back in her chair, exhausted. "Sorry. That was the hormones." She put her face in her hands. "I've missed you," she explained. "Please stay. How long can you stay?"

Finn looked at her with only a little bit of pity and dose of generosity. "We can stay as long as you like," he said soothingly. "Until you're sick of looking at us, we can stay." He smiled at her.

There was a knock at the door. Finnvah opened it for Yimmil, who was laboring under a covered salver as wide as a cart-wheel. Sir Didymus and Ambrosius followed.

"Breakfast, Yes-Ma'am-Lady!" Yimmil shouted. He humped the huge platter indelicately atop a low table. The cover came off with a puff of bacon-scented steam. Eggs, pork products, grits, scones, balls of fruit in separate ice-nestled dishes, juices and sherberts, potatoes, clotted cream, toast and marmalade were packed together in glorious display.

"Ooooh," all of them said, worshipping the feast.

"Sweet Betty Sunshine!" Finn said. "Now _that's_ what I call a breakfast." They descended on the food like locusts on wheat.

* * *

"The thing to understand about the Labyrinth," Jareth said, as he led Bee through the Goblin Market, "is that it is in some sense, alive, in the same way I am." The crowd at the market parted before them, some bowing low in the way Finn had. The plaza was full—goblins, dwarves, tall veiled figures with delicate wrists which pointed at what they wished to acquire. Many of the vendors brought the best samples of their wares to Jareth's attention. It was a little like a scene out of one of the Godfather movies, only none of the people were human, and Jareth's long coat was black and he wore his sigil-necklace instead of a flower in his lapel. Very soon he looked like a peddler at a country fair, his pockets full of "taters and funyuns" and shoulders and sleeves pinned with brooches and earrings and posies and ribbons.

"You're only alive in some sense?" Bee grinned impudently at the Goblin King.

"That talent for parsing words runs in the family," Jareth dryly returned, pausing in front of a mirror at a secondhand clothing stall to preen and rearrange some of his coat's décor. "How much have your sister and your travelling companion told you about what your sister did to me?" He tightened his gloves over his fingers and admired himself, striking a pose.

"Not much," Toby admitted, and Jareth's face fell.

"Not much?" he said, clearly disappointed.

"I mean," Bee said, attempting some retroactive diplomacy, "I know you're not quite human, and I know there are a lot more weird magical people hanging around the world than any human person but my sister probably ever notices. And I know you were feeling depressed about… not being able to change. And Sarah cast some sort of spell on you that helped you change."

"Not much, then," Jareth said with some irony. "So you know then, that I used to be immortal, and now I'm mortal."

"Yes, sir," Toby said.

"I will grow old, and someday, I will die of old age," Jareth said with particular relish. Jareth paused to look over an ancient wooden merry-go-round being turned by harnessed ostriches. Toby watched, too. The painted horses spun very fast; those bustards were kicking up a full head of steam and the goblin riders were shrieking with joy. "You see the axis, where this wheel turns?" Jareth asked.

"Yes," said Toby, not sure where the conversation was going.

"The Labyrinth is like that contraption. The inhabitants are the riders. And I am that rather solid and necessary axis. The axis mundi." He gave a raucous laugh that harmonized with the goblins' screams of pleasure. "Nothing turns without my presence. Now, let's say the axis were moved. Let's pretend it changed. Just very slightly moved, off its base. Not completely off. What would happen?"

"It wouldn't be as easy to turn. It might even break," Toby suggested. "You think the Labyrinth is going to … break? Because you're mortal now?" Toby pondered that. It sounded pretty serious, but the Labyrinth seemed so ancient, so stable, that he couldn't imagine it growing old, or dying.

"That is exactly what has me worried. The cycle of the seasons is returning to the Labyrinth, just as the cycle of human mortality is weighing on me. And Winter is particularly worrisome." They had paused at a stall and Jareth was investigating a tennis racket, plucking at the catgut as if it were a guitar. He laid it down among the higgle-piggle of ancient sports equipment piled on a board, disappointed with its soundlessness.

"That sounds bad," Toby replied, but unable to keep up any more, mentally or physically.

Jareth scowled at him, hands on hips. "Why do you lag behind?"

Toby's empty stomach gurgled audibly, and Jareth laughed. "Oh. Oh! That's right. Food." He said the word with disdain and meandered Bee aside the market and over to a fenced-in beer hall, "The Swishy Fish," according to the sign and the lipstick on the trout. "Breakfast for the boy, please, and two pints." The diminutive proprietor almost fell over himself in a hurry to get their order in, bowing all the while.

"Aren't you going to eat anything?" Bee asked, as he tucked into an insane-looking but tasty traditional English breakfast—traditional except for the kippers, whose mouths had been roughed and their eye-sockets filled with googly-eyes. Jareth titled his chair back and watched the throng at commerce and popped his coat collar against the chill and damp.

"I have a complicated relationship with food, but if you like, the four of us can take dinner together tonight." Bee grunted in the affirmative around a mouthful of beans and washed them down with the beer. It felt strange to shovel down all this food while the Goblin King ate nothing, and only toyed with drinking. But a few months living rough in the streets had taught him the value of wasting no time with a hot meal on someone else's dime. Compared to lukewarm containers deli meals scavenged from dumpsters, or the even more rare pleasures of quickie-mart nachos and chili-dogs and slushies, this breakfast was a feast.

Jareth, meanwhile, had plucked a crystal out of the air and was passing it over and over his palm and knuckles. He caught up the whirling bauble in his gloved hand and stared through it into the market.

"So why does Winter have you so worried?" Toby asked between bites of revivifying eggs and fish.

"Nobody here, not the goblins, or the trees, or the fairies, or boggarts or bears or fieries or fauns or any other creature that lives here has seen a winter in…. " He kilted his head to one side, indicating an indefinitely unknown period of time. "Few of them have anywhere else to go, and it's not certain how long Winter will last."

"Yeah, but it has to end eventually," Bee said confidently, mopping up his bean-juice with the last of his toast. "Cycle of the seasons, one thing follows another—right?" He glanced up at Jareth. "Right?"

Jareth clutch the crystal so tightly it seemed to smush down to nothingness in his palm.

"In normal circumstances, yes," Jareth said, avoiding his eyes. "But the King of Winter is imprisoned here, in the Labyrinth. Sarah trapped him in the Observatory during her… latest adventure in my kingdom."

"So, I guess the King of Winter might work to keep it cold, since he's here… against his will?" Bee suggested. The title conjured a bushy-bearded Father-Christmas figure of the type that appeared on higher-quality greeting cards, wearing furs and surrounded with lanterns and charmed sparrows, but he had the feeling this was probably the wrong impression, based on the Goblin King's mood.

"No, he's not inclined to do me favors," Jareth smiled a cruel smile. "He owns what he owns, and owes what he owes, and if he can do me, or my kingdom, or my family any harm, be assured he will do it."

"Kill him," Bee advised him, flat mouthed with the ugliness of his own suggestion. Jareth arched a sculptured brow at him, but Bee shook his head at it. "That's something I've learned with Finn. You ask once, and you ask politely, but if a monster wants to be a monster, you have to kill it. A cage teaches nothing but to hate, and to wait…" he trailed off, unable to read Jareth's expression.

"To hate, and to wait," Jareth said quietly. "And when have you ever been put in a cage?" He gestured dismissively at Bee's attempt to explain himself. "You're right, though. Perceptive little chap. I cannot kill the King of Winter. Cannot. For you see, he is stamped in the same immortal mold I myself wore until very recently. The King of Winter is impervious to death."

"Well, maybe Sarah should marry him," Bee suggested. "That'll settle his hash."

Jareth had grinned at him then, looking a mischievous ten years old, and they both began to giggle hysterically. The frenzy was cut short by Toby developing hiccups, and the arrival of the Swishy Fish's proprietor.

The Goblin King effusively thanked the be-aproned goblin chef, while the latter refused even the mention of payment. Borne up by the laughter, his hiccups subsiding, Toby went back out with his escort into the swirl of the Goblin Market.

"I wish I could help you," Bee said, "But Finn's right, I'm just a kid."

"You're less child than man these days," Jareth said affectionately. He paused at a stall full of pet shop junk and took two birdcages off the hands of the proprietress and gave them to Toby. When he had the cages well in hand, Jareth stood in front of him, blocking his view, eating up all the attention in the peculiar way he had. When he stepped away, the Goblin Market was gone and Jareth and Bee were alone outside the very gates of the Labyrinth, in the blink of an eye. Snow was falling in gentle lazy spits from the dark sky.

"Wow," Bee said, incredibly impressed. "Can you teach me how to do that?"

"Yes, when you can hold your right elbow in your right hand, I'll teach you."

Bee looked around at the clusters of wilting white flowers climbing the walls, and the sluggish fairies fluttering to them, sipping at the nectar. "So what are we doing here?"

Jareth crossed his arms over his chest. "You are going to help me. I'm granting your wish. Collect the fairies for me. All of them." He nudged the nearest cage with his boot. "Though it's not too late for you to turn back. It's not an easy task."

"They don't look so tough," Toby said. He had faced shucks and werewolves and grindylows—pixies seemed like small potatoes.

"They're tougher than you think," Jareth warned grimly. "And I would prefer them to be collected alive, please. Let's see if I can't find you some tools." He walked over to a little cottage snuggled up close to the walls, the size of a child's playhouse. A garden of flowers and vegetables had all gone to untended ruin, and he crushed the dying plants under his boots. Jareth threw open the door of the cottage and ducked low to enter. Toby put down the cages and followed.

"Whose house is this?" Bee asked. The whole cottage looked like it had been abandoned for months. The bed was neatly made, but a chest of drawers stood open and empty, and it felt strangely emptied of purpose, like all personal items had been stripped.

"That miserable dwarf," Jareth said, not quite in answer to Toby. He reached out over a weentsy wooden table and picking up a gilt-edged envelope. Toby recognized it as one of the invitations for the wedding party last August. "He never even bothered to say good-bye to Sarah, or take his formal leave of me. I tell you now, young Toby, never trust a beardless dwarf or a bald lion. Wretched creatures." He dropped the unopened invitation and exited in a huff. Outside on the back wall of the cottage were a series of gardening implements. Jareth handed down a heavy brass sprayer to Bee. "This will stun them."

Bee nodded.

"Stuff these cages as full as you can, and I'll be back to pick you up in time for dinner."

"But—" Toby thought to protest being left out here alone all day doing the equivalent of rounding up stray kittens, but buttoned his lip,. He _had_ offered to help, after all. "Okay."

Jareth rummaged in his pockets and pulled out a potato and an onion and a shiny green apple and laid them on the lip of a small green pool by a water-pump. "If you get hungry before I fetch you, there's that. If the weather gets worse, take shelter in the cottage. Bring the fairies inside with you. Oh, and Toby?"

"Yeah?"

"Be careful. They bite!" Jareth laughed like this was a joke as he faded from sight.

* * *

Under the world, under the earth, under the mountain underground, the Observatory waited. It was meant to be neutral ground, the place where kings could speak together on affairs that touched on their mutual kingdoms, but John Company had always used it as a chessboard, a stage for political games between the world _above_ and the world _between_. Jareth couldn't remember if the place had ever been in any way pleasant, but the King of Winter had slowly but methodically transformed it into a place most unbearable, and it had become less a parley seat and more Company's embassy as time went on.

Jareth had always come here only reluctantly, only at utmost need. It stank of the rage of its prisoners—for it was a prison, too, housing beings and forces the Kings of the Labyrinth and of Winter wished to hold in check. Sarah had changed that, too, the way she had subtly changed so many things, when she had returned to the Labyrinth searching for the Goblin King. She had locked the King of Winter away in the very cell that John Company had long promised to pen Jareth in.

The last time he had come here had been only a few months ago, when he had been so suffused with bliss that it seemed no harm would ever touch him again. He had come out of pity, for whatever else John Company might have been or done, he was also the closest creature Jareth had to blood kin… or would be, following the birth of his child. It was for the baby-to-be's sake, and for Sarah's, that he had come, in August, with his offer.

"Hallo, John," he had said, standing before the iron door of his cell.

"Hello, Jar'eth," John Company had replied. The King of Winter, though not young, had always had a look of juicy vitality to him, like a plump snake digesting his dinner. Confined, however, he had seemed rather shrunk, his skin the flabby deflated looseness of a lanced blister.

"I've come to grant you amnesty," Jareth had said. Usually their meetings would have commenced with fencing and subtle insults, but Jareth had been in no mood to play. He had intended to make his offer, see it accepted, and leave. He had expected only that.

"Amnesty. Such a generous offer, one might wonder why." The King of Winter had stroked his amulet, an oblong of flat obsidian hanging around his neck, voice fruity and playful. Still, there had been hunger and anticipation in that voice, and Jareth had known to be wary.

"Tomorrow is my wedding day." Technically, it hadn't been his wedding-day, but it had been the day on which he and Sarah had mutually agreed to celebrate their nuptials for friends, family, and kingdom. It was a day to give gifts and receive them, and a day to be at peace with family. "The terms are simple, and not to be put for negotiation. You will leave the Labyrinth and never return. You will take no revenge and work no harm upon myself, or my family, or any of those who live under my protection. In return for this promise, I grant you your freedom."

"And how do you intend to make me keep my promise?" Company had smiled a ghastly smile and straightened his ragged cuffs.

"You leave your amulet," Jareth had replied.

The King of Winter's response was a gale of insane laughter cutting as December.

"Oh my," he said, giggling compulsively, wiping his streaming eyes on his sleeve. "Ah me, no." He vomited forth another hysterical chain of laughter. "Let me tell you something, un-brother, as it seems you have forgotten essentials. I am the King of Winter, and King Over the World. I am the king of locked doors, king of wealth accrued from the starving child, the barren womb, the suicide. I have been King Over the World for generations unto generations of mortal men. And who are you? I do not bargain unless I profit. Take your offer and shove it up your arse. It should just…about…fit."

_Truly_, Jareth had thought, _we are brothers._

"John," Jareth had said, surprised by his own compassion, or foolishness, "It will not be pleasant for you, waiting for your freedom. I doubt you'll ever have it again. Accept what I give, and let there be peace between us."

"Peace between us, Jare'th, will be the peace of your grave. Let your wife come and make this offer. Yes," and here the King of Winter had flung out his arms and made a snowstorm of his narrow cell, "Let her come to me, and beg my pardon, on her knees, and then..." Beards of frost spiked out from the door's iron rivets. "Then I shall repay her, and you, for your hospitality."

Jareth had backed away, as much as from dismay as the icy cold.

"Think on this, Jare'th. Where winter is, there am I. In the screen and ice I lie. When the days in your kingdom grow short, and the nights turn cold, come to me again, and we shall bargain on better terms. Now leave," John Company commanded. "My palace now is somewhat smaller than it used to be, but it's still mine, and I'm bored with your face."

"Goodbye then, John," Jareth had said, dismayed. He had gone directly to his room in the Castle, and locked himself in, but it had been an hour before the heated water of his bath could take the chill out of his bones, and another hour before he felt calm enough to go to Sarah and lie about where he'd been.

_I should have given in to her at the very beginning, when she came here wanting me. I should have never let the King Over the World so much as see her face_, Jareth thought to himself. _But I was angry, and a liar, and bent on having my own way. Her will was stronger than his, and her courage greater than mine. Now we'll see what we will see. _

And now here he was again, with the days gone short and nights gone cold and winter breathing down their necks, and he understood the prediction John Company had made. With Bee safely managing the fairies, and his wife tucked into her green bedroom plump with their baby, Jareth came back to the Observatory, and _observed_.

All was silent and dark as a tomb. He raised his hand and summoned a crystal, lit inside with bright fire. The iced-over walls flickered with reflected light. He made his way down into the silent space to where locks held prisoners tight.

All the doors stood open. All, to a one, all empty.

"John Company," Jareth whispered to the empty space. "King of Winter. Where have you _gone_?"

* * *

**Next… Chapter Three: "The Lovers"**

* * *

_A/N: There's a nice stinger for the close of this chapter. Many thanks to my beta, FrancesOsgood, for feedback and assist with the usual grammar and spelling bits, but also for helping with the construction of the plot. "Plot?" you ask, true believers? "It's not going to be romance and sex and babytimes fluff from beginning to end?" D'accord, there will be all that good stuff, but with plot too. We've already begun. Special prize to the reviewer who figures out how the King of Winter got out with all the prisoners in tow. Double prizes to those who guess where John Company and Co. have gone._

_Chapter titles are taken from the Major Arcana of the Tarot deck. Just FYI, If you want to look up the symbolic meaning attached to the applicable card._

**Fanny**: But you KNOW. :D  
**Kwizzle**: Ain't Toby-in-love GREAT?  
**Jetredgirl**: Strap in. It's going to be a (baby) bumpy ride.  
**Panda**: If there's an accident, Toby will have a new entry for dead things starting with "F."  
**J Luc Pitard**: Toby's definitely a major POV character. It's fun.  
**irgroomer**: 'Ello! I'm so psyched to write it!  
**Jalen Strix**: House Stark comes a little closer to the mark than I'd like to discuss. There may indeed be a Red Wedding moment sometime in the near future.  
**Galileo**: Welcome! Here you go, poppin'-fresh chapter ready to read.


	3. The Lovers

**Chapter Three: The Lovers**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Three:**

"Neuköln"—David Bowie and Brian Eno  
"Poison"—Alice Cooper

* * *

**_Author's Note:_**_ The end of this chapter contains allusions to consensual sexual behavior. Reader discretion is advised._

* * *

Sarah Williams sat at the table and watched the men do battle with their full plates. Finnvah skipped from one dish to another, sampling everything and moving to the next challenge while keeping up a steady stream of humorous banter. Toby kept an ear open to the conversation but ate through his food like a tank rolling over everything in his path. And then there was Jareth, who treated meals in company like a sniper in hostile territory, swallowing quick bites when no one was looking, a shadow on the field.

_I'm the nuclear option_, Sarah smiled grimly, realizing she was on seconds already_. Just blowing it away and leaving nothing behind_. She gave Egg a rundown on every bite she took, how it tasted, how it nourished, apologizing for the spicy peppers and the pickled garlic in advance. She was plump: she was going to be huge. Great with Egg.

She handed a ripe apple over to Jareth, who sliced it for her, carefully ate one of the pieces under her supervision, and handed over the rest. He returned her smile with a look that said, "So there." He kissed her, and his lips tasted of apples.

Sarah hadn't expected to enjoy being so completely coddled. Jareth anticipated her desires as if she were a book he had memorized. And what Jareth didn't know about her or her needs—and Sarah was always surprised to discover what strange and eclectic directions Jareth's store of knowledge took and the odd places it dead-ended—he always attempted to learn. Two weeks ago he had been confused and disturbed when he came to collect her for their morning walk and found her sitting on their bed in hysterics, holding her jeans in her hands.

"They don't fit anymore!" she had yelled, and buried her face in the denim and sobbed.

"Yes, well, you've gotten very much rounder since yesterday," he'd replied logically.

"But these are my favorite jeans!" she'd said, hiccupping through her tears, as if that explained absolutely everything. "And I'm just going to get fatter and fatter!"

"Yes?" he'd said. "I'd thought that was rather the idea." He'd kissed her cheek, and she had been momentarily pacified until he'd made the dire mistake of murmuring "My plump little hen," in her ear in seductive tones.

Sarah had shrieked in outrage and come close to attempted murder. Disaster had been averted when he'd apologized and asked what he ought to do for her.

"I need maternity clothes," she said, sad and horrified at the idea of muumuus and pants with gusset crotches and stretch panels. But Jareth had been delighted with the idea. He'd gathered a long length of green ribbon and used it to measure her for pretty dresses, full of "froo," ones that he intended to make himself. Every place a particular swell of her body met the edge of the ribbon, he tied a knot to mark the measurement.

Her wardrobe soon hung with a rainbow palette of the sort of fairy-tale frocks she'd dreamed of as a child. Better than her dreams, because they weren't just pretty, they were comfortable, and could be accessorized with the showers of jewels he'd threatened her with during their courtship. For herself, Sarah preferred to wear no extra adornment than her wedding-ring and the brass key, her sigil, around her neck.

The measurements of her swelling Egg were carefully and solemnly done every morning now before she dressed. The knots came centimeters apart on the length of the ribbon, and then inches.

"You understand," he said to her one morning, laying a kiss on her navel, which was slowly developing from an innie to an outie, "You're not quite human anymore."

"Oh?" She stroked his hair and he heaved her up into his arms and deposited her naked into the bed he ever-more-rarely shared, and began to make certain and devastating love to her. "I'm already pregnant," she reminded him when, sweating and smiling, he had begun a second round on the heels of the first.

"Well, it never hurts to make certain," he had said.

"Why aren't I human anymore?" Sarah had asked minutes, hours, eternities later, as he lay close against her, arms and legs wrapped spiderlike around her, as if trying to draw her into his body.

"Oh, you're human. Just not… quite completely anymore. It was the fruit you ate, you see. Fairy fruit. A thin veneer of fairy magic, just under your skin," he had replied, kissing the sweat from her neck. "You're like my reflection now, human and fae in three-quarter parts, meeting me halfway. Let me know if you feel strange, or manifest any new abilities, but for now, I think all of your magic is… unconsciously focused inward. On this." And he had stroked her belly possessively, and then stroked lower, his eyes asking for an invitation that was freely given.

The heat of that memory made her blush, suddenly coming to herself in the middle of dinner, with an empty plate and Jareth's hand on her thigh. She patted her belly, feeling content and well-cared-for, and pleasantly useless. At this moment, everything seemed perfect.

Finvah poured them all some of the chewy redcurrant wine, making sure Sarah's was well-diluted with seltzer. She couldn't, and wouldn't, take anything stronger, and she evaluated Finnvah carefully as he poured a similarly barely-alcoholic measure for Toby, though her brother didn't notice.

_He's very attentive_, Sarah thought. _And Toby… Toby loves him. _ Toby himself was unconsciously resplendent with his new haircut and new black leather jacket. He looked less childlike to her eyes now, more like a young cat than a kitten, and she had an inkling that his day out with Jareth probably had something to do with that, though neither of them had confessed to the day's activities so far._  
_  
There had been a throng of goblins dancing attendance on them at the beginning of the meal, and when one of them was in danger of becoming too rambunctious, Jareth had sent him on an errand for outré tableware or improbable-sounding side dishes. Most never returned from these petty quests, and by the time they were negotiating the meal's unconditional surrender in the form of a smashed Pavlova, the four of them were alone.

Toby had brought his sketchbook to dinner, and was showing it to Jareth. Jareth was interested, nay, fascinated by Toby's drawings, far more interested than he appeared to be in dessert, asking questions about the creatures detailed there, what methods had been used to track and corner them. Finn occasionally interjected with color commentary on the fights in question, hanging closely by Toby's side, even daring to wrap an arm around the younger boy's shoulders. Sarah pillaged the Pavlova while the other conquering generals were otherwise occupied.

She looked at the book, and saw rather more pages occupied than not.

"Just how many people have you killed, Toby?" Sarah burst out suddenly, surprising herself.

"None!" he replied with defensive surprise. "Just monsters. Never people." His narrow cat's-face had a moral conviction she wished she could share.

"Just because they're monsters doesn't mean they're not people. Would you kill a goblin?" she asked him, thankful there were none in the room to overhear this part of the conversation.

"I would if it was a monster," Toby replied, with a smug circular logic uncannily like Jareth's.

"Or if they were the pet horrors of the Winter Court," Finnvah broke in. He leaned forward over the table, staring at Sarah. "Why the sudden moral indignation? We're just following your or—ow!" Finn jumped, and Sarah realized Jareth had kicked him under the table. He looked at the Goblin King in dawning betrayal. "You mean she doesn't know?"

"Know what?" Sarah said. "I don't even know what movies are playing right now! Finnvah! Explain! And you," she said, turning her most dire Library Lady look on her husband, who visibly paled, "Don't interrupt."

"It's nothing to worry Your Majesty," Finnvah said gently, and Sarah clenched her teeth. The more courteous Finnvah was, the less inclined she was to be pacified. "With the King of Winter imprisoned here, the Gentry have been doing whatever they like, and what they like apparently is to let all their minions run wild. There's been collateral damage to humanity, and some wolves at doors that are friendly to you and your spouse. Red Branch, at least, isn't willing to put up with it. Neither am I. So we've been performing some public service, keeping the NYC streets clean."

"Public service," Sarah said, wishing her hands weren't trembling. "You mean guerilla warfare. Against the fae." No one made any attempt to spin her statement. Sarah sighed and looked down at her belly. She didn't like to think about the fae. Her few encounters with them had been ugly and taxing. The fae were never truly born and never truly died, but instead made and unmade themselves according to whim and devoured the souls of humanity the way she'd consumed dessert. She had a touch of their magic in her now, and that was disturbing enough. The idea of her brother doing anything to get their attention, much less their animosity, filled her with a fear so deep it seemed to stab.

The baby kicked her, as if to remind her of its nature. She clasped her hands over her stomach protectively. _I don't mind you, Egg, but your father's family… they're like gods, capricious, not to be trusted. I hope you take after me instead._

Everyone was looking at her, waiting for her. Sarah looked at Jareth, wanting to lay her burden of anxiety on his shoulders, but she could see he was already weighed down with burdens of his own. "You shouldn't hide things like this from me," Sarah said, as calmly as she could manage. "Not when they affect Toby. Tell me everything."

"Try not to be so vexed, sweetheart," he said. "I was only waiting for young Finnvarrah and Toby to come visit, so I could do just that."

"That talk we were going to have," Finnvah said, enigmatically.

"This is that talk." Jareth pointed at Finn and Toby. "Sit."

"That talk we could have had months ago, the last time Toby and Finnvah were here?" Sarah said with asperity.

"Yes!" Jareth said with guilty exasperation. He leaned forward and summoned a crystal into his palm. The light in the room grew perceptively darker, as though the candles were on a dimmer switch. Jareth's voice took on a distant singsong quality as he twirled the crystal in his fingers. "I wanted to talk to you all about the Labyrinth. A land serene and a crystal moon, moving without care under the feet of the lost and the lonely. The Labyrinth, the last largest stronghold of creation's bastards, always in perpetual bloom. A place that none of my people but me have ever cared to tend." The crystal glowed with a low and homely light, one that spoke of warmth and summer flowers and endless days of innocent delight.

The crystal bubble floated out of Jareth's hand and hovered over the table. "The Labyrinth. My parent, my lover, my child. A place where time runs forward or backward, but nothing ever changes. Until very recently. Now change has come and I cannot stop it. Winter has come to the Labyrinth, and it will be hard, and cruel. My kingdom has never had to bear up under Winter, though the majority of the denizens have endured and survived them out in the mortal world." The light of the crystal swirled through the room. Everywhere the golden light touched, tiny flowers bloomed, and then shed their leaves and dropped petals of autumn sparks.

Sarah felt stricken. Change had come; she had been the one to bring the change. Finnvah had asked her, when she came here last, if she would be willing to let the Labyrinth be utterly destroyed, if it meant she could save Jareth. And she had said yes, yes entirely, with no hesitation. She had meant it, too.

"Turn the seasons back, then," she commanded him. "Reorder time. Make things the way they were." A lightning-flash from the crystal scoured the room white, and miniature thunder echoed inside.

"I can't re-order time anymore," Jareth said. "I've lost the knack along with my talons. The wheel of seasons is stiff and will only move forward. Winter won't be stopped." The crystal floated low, full of snow now like a shaken snow-globe.

"So this is all my fault," Sarah whispered. "I changed you, and I broke everything."

"I believe this change to the Labyrinth was inevitable, with or without your intervention," Jareth said quietly. "It isn't a matter of fault. What concerns me—us—is what can be done to prepare for it." The light of the crystal turned gray, and then blue with cold. "I spent a great portion of this day speaking to certain advocates, certain looked-up-to personages in the various precincts. They will spread the word. Some of the people will stay and do what they've done before—cope. But quite a few more will need to leave, or want to take shelter elsewhere. Finnvarrah and Toby have carved out territory in the mortal world which could accommodate a certain number of … refugees, though I mislike leaving my people to their own devices in a hostile land."

"There are always the Houses of the Free People, Your Majesty," Finnvah suggested. "Red Branch would be happy to take in some of the Labyrinth for the winter. And there are a few others I could suggest. The Jollymakers and House Greensleeves. Red Branch has a good reciprocal relationship with them, and they're not scatterbrained. Bonus points, they speak English and not that archaic Dutch. The Free People owe you. They'll be glad to help. I 'll send messages. I'll send word."

"_We_ will," Toby said, nodding firmly.

"Well, I didn't want to speak for you, honey-Bee."

"I'm going with you," Toby said stubbornly.

"Your faith in my reputation is flattering, young Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix, but it may be misplaced," Jareth said calmly. "Your requests may not be met with enthusiasm."

"I'll generate the necessary enthusiasm. Your Majesty." Finnvah grinned his insouciant grin, and Sarah saw that Jareth even managed a thin smile back.

"Even for goblin guests?" Jareth asked. And the grin dropped from Finnvah's face. Jareth nodded. "That's what I thought. None of the Free People will take in goblins willingly. Too destructive. Too chaotic. Too difficult to control. And most certainly my prerogative and not anyone else's."

"We'll take care of the goblins and the Goblin City," Sarah said. "Even if we can't do anything more, we can do that." She wanted to sit on his knee and have him tell her everything would be perfect and safe, but he only nodded at her, his mind obviously still troubled.

"There's more, isn't there?" Sarah asked quietly.

"Oh yes." Jareth stared at the hovering crystal and then took her hand in his, and squeezed it tightly. "I was desperate enough to go to the Observatory and try to speak to the King of Winter today. I had thought to coerce him into tamping down the season. He wasn't there. Someone, or something, let him out. And not just him. Every one of the higher powers and wild and dangerous forces has also been set loose. The season of Winter is here, in the Labyrinth, and John Company is also set free in this world and yours with all the greater forces unbound in his wake."

Sarah felt nothing for a moment. She heard Finnvah cursing with remarkable inventiveness, and even Toby looked a bit pale, even though he didn't know, he couldn't know how awful the King of Winter was.

John Company wasn't just the King of Winter, he was King Over the World, a tricky fae king of cold intellectual pursuits and closed doors. The King of hardship and greed. Receipts and high-denomination bills blew out from his footsteps, and he hated the world he owned, and wanted every human heart in it to be as cold and ugly as his.

He had told Sarah as much. He had told Sarah, too, that the world wasn't enough for him. He wanted the Labyrinth, and every other outflung branch of the free kingdoms of make-believe and possibility. He wanted to mortgage dreams themselves. She had bound him up, and now he was free.

She didn't hear the words the men were speaking, she only heard the music of their voices, songs of fear and anger and imprecation.

"I'm not afraid," she murmured. "I'm not afraid of him!" They all looked at her, and she could see she'd surprised at least Jareth with her certainty. She stretched out her hand and summoned the floating crystal. It floated over her head in a diadem of golden light which pierced all cold, all fear.

"I'm not afraid," she told them, and Jareth most of all. "So don't you be. Let him come," she said, feeling power in every inch of her body. "Let him come and try to hurt us. I'll teach him fear. I'll teach him to be afraid of _me_."

It only lasted another moment, that warmth of certainty and courage, but the memory of it soothed her still. She shrugged, and was herself again, and wanted another helping of dessert.

"Hear, hear," Finnvah muttered, with a wry grin. "Well-said, Your Majesty. I believe you."

They talked for another hour, pouring round the water and the wine several more times, laying plans. Sarah tried to keep her attention fixed on the voices and faces of the family Jareth had stitched together as carefully as he'd stitched the dress she wore tonight. But she yawned once, and then a second time, unable to help herself, and Jareth had called the council closed when she yawned a third time.

"You could keep going without me," she demurred, as Jareth offered his arm to her.

"No," he said. "We won't go on without you. It's time for bed. You're tired." And she was, she was. She was working, and she was making, and no matter how important or interesting the discussion was, it wasn't as important to him as she was. The Labyrinth might be parent and lover and child to Jareth, but he was ready to put all cares for it aside, just to care for her.

In their bedroom, she smiled to him as he acted the maid, taking off her shoes and pulling her dress over her head, leaving her in a pretty shift that was both undergarment and nightgown in one. Every day he found time to embroider a flower or an insect against a hem, and it was one of their games for Sarah to discover the new addition. Today it was a bumblebee, fat and fuzzy as the real item, and probably an intentional reminder of her brother's new nickname. She pointed it out without comment. One of the happiest surprises of their marriage so far was how they didn't need constant conversation to fill in empty space and moments. She could just be with him, and feel everything she felt, and relax into the friendly and communicative silence.

He combed through her hair, which was thicker and stronger than it had ever been, curling itself around everything and getting everywhere. She forgave him for not sharing his concerns with her earlier. He had a need for an audience that would, in any human man, be the most disgusting narcissism. But Jareth couldn't help himself. It was his nature to respond, to reflect, to be what others needed him to be. It always had been, even when what they needed was a villain, or a victim. She had seen it before, when she had made him the villain of her rite of passage eighteen years ago. She saw it more recently when they took their morning constitutional together, in different places of the Labyrinth, when the smallfolk who inhabited it came forward and asked him to judge disputes or pronounce judgments or even answer requests for a song or some sage advice. He was King for them, because they needed him to be. And he was also a proud husband and father-to-be, showing off Sarah and her increasingly heavy burden to all and sundry. But whatever the performance was, there was a core of his essential self that wasn't a reflection, and she nurtured it where she found it.

_This is why I can deny you nothing you want, for your own, for yourself, Jareth. You ask for so little_. He had wanted the baby to be born in the Labyrinth, and had wanted it so badly that she'd agreed, almost without argument, dropping her life and her work to please him. He wanted to dress her up and collect a roomful of electrical instruments that couldn't be played, and he wanted to spend time playing checkers or backgammon or Go Fish with her and stage vast and ridiculous pageants of goblin legends for her, ones that sometimes involved chickens. He wanted to devote some hours to his own pursuits, and give her leisure to explore her own—which most recently was sleep. He wanted to keep her safe. He loved her, and that wasn't a reflection. It was him.

His comforting hand came down at that moment and covered her forehead. _Yes_, his skin told hers. _Yes, that is what I want. You, safe._

_You're everything_, she told the baby and Jareth both, without words. _John Company, the King of Winter, he's nothing. Winter is nothing. Only you are real_.

He stroked his fingers back over her scalp and she turned and smiled up at him. He'd let the goblins hack away at his hair again, and it was a perfect and gorgeous mess. She stood and took his hand and led him to the window.

"It's beautiful," she said softly, looking out at the snow. It swirled down from the sky, down on the rooftops and the people outside. The braziers were full and lit, making little beacons of homely light. Despite the late hour, the Goblin City was busy. Some goblins were warming themselves at the fires. Others were engaged in deadly snowball fights. Still others were singing songs in praise of war and blood and the death of Elves and men, and others about explosions, or wolves, or gout to the tunes of Christmas music. The snow seemed to dampen these sounds, making them kindly, even sweet. But Jareth only sighed and pressed his eyes against Sarah's shoulder.

"No, Jareth. It's beautiful. You mustn't be afraid." She took his wrists and moved his hands from her hips to cup around her waist. "Everything is going to be all right."

"Oh, she knows that for a fact, does she?" he asked archly, but she saw in the reflection of the window as he was looking out, and she saw that what he saw didn't completely horrify him. They stood in silence for a while.

"What would have happened to me," Sarah whispered, "If you'd left me alone here?"

He waited a long time before answering, hearing the accusation, and the plea for forgiveness in her voice. "You would have managed," he finally whispered back. Jareth was rarely one to lie_._

_I would have managed,_ she thought. _But it would have been lonely_.

"I prefer things as they are," he added, kissed the bare nape of her neck and rubbed her round belly in careful slow circles. She saw his eyes flicker back outside, watching the flakes falling in their beautiful spirals. His hands were warm.

"It _is_ beautiful," he said with childlike wonder. They watched the snow drift down for endless eternal moments. "Dark as it is, beautiful."

She turned in his arms and kissed him tenderly. "You're more beautiful than the snow," Sarah said. "Take me to bed."

* * *

"Bee, what are you doing?" Finn asked him in the dark, as Bee drew back the covers and slid into the narrow bed next to him. The boy's skin was warm from a recent scrubbing, and Finn's next thought was that he was feeling his _skin_, Bee's _naked_ skin, and the boy slithered around him and he was there, and _oh shit…_

"I'm cold," Bee said, with an innocence totally belied by his hard and adult member pressed against Finn's thigh. Bee's fingers found the smooth raised lines of the tattoos that curved down Finnvah's shoulders to his arms, and he shivered as the boy traced the lines of the marks that wove down his ribcage, swirled against his hipbones. "Don't you want to keep me warm?" Bee asked, still innocent, but his hands became bolder, knowing.

_Sarah said, oh sweet gods of Hell, I want this, in her own house she's going to murder me_, and he ignored everything and kissed that open and willing mouth, taking it, sucking the sweetness of Bee's tongue, knowing he was on the threshold of total damnation. "Bee," Finn gasped, knowing he needed to push the boy away now. "Bee, please, I can't."

"Yes you can," Bee said, taking him in a strong grip. "I can feel you can. I want to. With you. Please." Finn let himself drown in one more sweet kiss, savouring the taste, but then pressed Bee back on the mattress, pressed himself away and out of his grasp.

Bee made a sound of hunger and frustration, reaching out for him, struggling to get back to him, but Finn leaned his forearm against his chest and held him down. "Why not?" Bee asked, close to tears. "Why don't you want me?"

"Bee," Finn said. "Toby. " He rested his head against the boy's chest.

"I'm nineteen. I'm legal," Bee said, as if that made everything acceptable. He gripped one of Finn's horns in his hand, a second thumb, a protuberance caught in his fist. It made Finn's skull ache pleasantly. "Can we please, please just fuck already?" He steered Finn's face to his using his horn as leverage. _Steer is the appropriate word_, Finn thought, even as Bee kissed him in a way that should have completely distracted him. _Sarah will make a steer out of me if I do this. But…_ Bee sucked at his lip, _where the bee sucks there suck I, yes—no. No!  
_  
"Bee, stop," Finn said, trying to remember just why it was important to say no to the warm and wiggly youth who wanted nothing more than to receive him. "This is an ambush," Finn groaned.

"This is an invitation," Bee said, now sounding irritated.

"You know where we're going next?" Finn asked gently, hoping a sudden shift in tone might turn this all around. He couldn't quite bring himself to let go of Bee, but tried to calm and soothe instead of rouse. "We're about to go back up into the world, and talk to dangerous people. _They'll_ ambush me. They'll lie and cheat and steal. And they won't ask my permission to do the things they'll probably do to me. Or you, if you come with me."

"Of course I'm coming with you! I love you!" Bee looked aside and then abruptly let Finn go. He tried to leave the bed, but Finn grabbed his wrist. Toby tried to unwrap those strong brown fingers, gave up, and turned his face aside in shame. "I'm sorry I ambushed you. It wasn't fair." He shook his wrist angrily, but Finn held on. "Let me go," Bee said.

Finn dropped his wrist and drew a shuddering breath. "Get back in this bed. Please."

Bee did as he asked, but carefully instead of eagerly. Finn tucked his covers in at his waist, a ridiculous stopgap measure.

"I'm not saying no forever. I'm saying no for right now." Bee moved further away, suspicious and angry. "But I'm saying yes for later. Soon." _And let Sarah make a liar out of me for that, _Finn thought_. Just let her try._ "You don't know a lot about me, honey-Bee. You may not like me when you know more. Sex… isn't a big deal at Red Branch. It's casual. Friendly. I've had a lot of partners."

"Are you poz?" Bee asked.

Finn wanted to laugh at that, but didn't. He was a veteran of the culture that used that lingo. Such an abrupt and ugly word for leper. "No, Bee." He stroked the boy's face, which was wet. "I'm just trying to do right by you."

_I'm really about to do this_, Finn thought, _But I don't care. I have to give him something_. His breath shifted into the low tones of desire, and he felt Bee's skin warming again. "Just lie there, like you're doing. Touch yourself. Lower," Finn said roughly. "Imagine it's me. I wish it was." He fixed his eyes on the motion of Bee's hand, on the blush that rose up on his pale skin. "How I want you. I want…" Finn caressed his own dark skin, fingers shivering goosebumps into his arms. "I want to touch you, there, where you're touching yourself, just lightly, just a little, and feel how hot you can get, how hard. See you twitching and full. And then, when you beg, I'll give you just a little more. Just a little. See your hips thrust like they're doing now, Bee. Put my hands on you harder, firmer. Feel the heat coming off your skin. So hot it seems like your sweat should sizzle. I'll want to lick your skin, just to taste it, see if it burns like a ghost pepper. Hear you moaning. Hearing you call my name. And just as you're about to spill, I'll take you in my mouth…

"Finn," Toby moaned, looking him in the eyes, desperate.

Finn's eyes glowed like molten gold. "And then you'll come," he murmured, "only then."

Bee crossed the forbidden distance between them and kissed desperately at Finn's mouth, losing all control, and making a sticky mess of himself and a portion of their bed. He was frantic, hungry, sucking at Finn's lips, searching for his tongue, reaching for his shoulders. Finn allowed himself just one moment of pure abandon as he kissed Bee back with equal passion… and then pushed the boy away with a lingering caress.

"Hold on to me, please," Toby begged. He was so pretty, so earnest, so undone.

_And this is how principles get compromised and promises get broken_, Finn thought with resignation. With trembling hands he took Bee back into the circle of his arms and hummed to him gently until the boy slept. He watched him for a long time, and worried about how much more complicated things were sure to get now. He thought about his utter lack of remorse for what he'd just done. And he had to smile, because even without touching him, Bee had screwed him but good.

* * *

**Next… Chapter Four: "The Star"**

* * *

_Finnvarrah knows his Shakespeare. I bet he's got the Fair Youth sonnets memorized. Jareth also knows his Shakespeare. Possibly also Shakespeare himself. Time is one of Jareth's old lovers._

_I think I made a few other literary references in here, but I forgot where I put them. If you see one, name it and you shall have a sweetie._

_Many thanks to Frances "Dark Lady" Osgood for acting as my beta and encouraging these shenanigans._

* * *

**Panda**: Sarah should have DEFINITELY shot John Company. But no worries, maybe she'll get the chance again?  
**Askeebe**: Nope, Toby's legal age. He's just innocent. Or maybe not so much after this chapter…  
**radar wing**: Right on. There was enough material to work with after the last story, although what it's getting sewn into is a bit of a surprise for me, too.  
**Jetredgirl**: There should be a Goblin King card in the Major Arcana, we're all agreed.  
**Kilikina12**: Here 'tis!  
**irgroomer**: The plot doth thicken, as doth certain parts of the anatomy, verily, forsooth…  
**Jalen Strix**: Nowhere good, nope.  
**Kwizzle**: Horny Toby is going to get Finn turned into a hornytoad by Sarah if they don't watch out. Goblin Queen don't play.


	4. The Star

**Chapter Four: The Star  
**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Four:**

"Chilly Down"—David Bowie  
"Ain't It Fun"—Paramore

* * *

Bee made it a point to sit across from Finn, and not next to him, on the ride back. Ostensibly it was because they were carrying quite a lot of Goblin Market cargo wrapped up in bundles and loops, and there wasn't room for them to sit together. Still, Bee looked daggers at Finn, who parried them all indifferently, which was maddening. Bee tried to find things other than Finn to occupy his mind with. It was going to be a longish ride.

Bee thought about the fairies. Catching them had been a tricky business. When the Goblin King arrived back at the dwarf's cottage, much earlier than Bee had expected, he had caught him idly sketching the dying flora. Jareth had drawn himself up to full height in front of the still empty cages, coat-tail blowing around his thighs, and given Bee a look of such supreme displeasure that Bee had had to fight the urge to cower. He understood then why Finn always approached Jareth so courteously. Bee had put his sketchbook away in a hurry and snapped to attention.

"What have you been doing?" Jareth had asked. He had tightened the gloves on his hands and kicked one of the empty cages. "Toby, where are the fairies I told you to gather?"

"Chill," Bee said. "They're in there." He had darted into the cottage with a dour Goblin King following dangerously behind.

_Hundreds of cats, thousands of cats, millions and billions and trillions of cats_, Bee thought to himself. Every horizontal surface of the cottage was covered with sleeping fairies, their gossamer wings folded around them, twitter-snoring softly in the dark and warm space. It made an impressive display.

"Huh," Jareth said, rubbing the side of his nose, obviously confused but pleased.

"I didn't want to stack them in the cages until later. I thought they might, you know, get squished."

"No, they like a little rough trade. You caught them all?" Jareth picked up one by the hair, but it slept on.

Toby smiled a grim smile. "I think so." He'd tried using the sprayer, but it was awkward, and every time he sprayed one, it struggled and bit before he could transfer it to the cage. He'd gotten about ten in one of the cages before the other fairies caught on and began dive-bombing him. He'd taken shelter inside, but then one of the fairies in the cage that had only caught an edge of the spray had woken up and started weeping like a lost child, and it made him feel… horrible. "I found some sugar and mashed up some stuff from the garden and mixed the spray with it. They ate it. Knocked them out. But, you know, I worried I might have poisoned them or something."

"No, they'll be fine. You did very well," Jareth had said. "Better than I'd imagined."

Bee looked at Finn, slouched down and half-dozing on the subway seat. He ought to be reliving those all too brief minutes in Finn's arms, not remembering weird challenges set by the Goblin King.

"Why are you staring at me?" Finn finally asked, without opening his eyes.

_I woke up ready to punch you or fuck you but I was alone, that's why._ "I'm looking at you because you're amazing," Bee said sarcastically.

"Do go on."

"You're so tall, and brown, and huge. You're the world's _biggest walking asshole_."

"Such naughty language." Finn hardly even blinked and settled more comfortably into his seat.

"You're one to talk about naughty language," Bee muttered. "Just you watch yourself, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. I'm in the Goblin King's favor."

Finn had yawned soft as a cat and nodded in agreement. "I like your new coat," he said. "Suits you."

Jareth had given him the coat. It was black leather, with zips on the pockets and cuffs, and painted with narrow bands of gold stripes on the sleeves. "A bee coat for the young Bee," Jareth had said. But that had come much later in the day, after all the errands.

Jareth had hauled Bee and the fairies along like luggage to several interesting places in the Labyrinth's interior, and had incomprehensible conversations with the various brownies and pixies and worms and gatekeepers and sylphs and dryads. Sometimes Bee felt he was very, very close to understanding the talk, but it never quite resolved into specific words. More like moods, commands, questions, given in tone of voice and the posture of Jareth's shoulders.

"I didn't know you could speak tree," Bee said, as they walked away from a grove where Jareth had had an interminable discussion with the biggest oak Bee had ever seen. The phonemes were made of swaying arms and flickering fingers, sighing susurrations, and even probably the subtle shadings of color of Jareth's long blond hair.

"I speak every language," Jareth said egotistically, and with another stomach-lurching hop, they were back in a room in the castle. Jareth set down one of the cages of fairies and opened it expediently by taking the entire front off. But Bee had eyes for something else, the one thing growing there. A gigantic peach tree bore golden-red fruit far out of season, mixed with flowering branches of tongue-pink. The released fairies drifted blurrily past him, sticking their wee heads into the throats of the flowers, or lounging on the curved fuzziness of the peaches. Slow petals and flecks of glitter showered down like snow.

The peaches glowed with warmth and light. The acid-sweet smell of them filled his nose and his head. Saliva filled his mouth. Breakfast had been long ago. Bee took a step forward. There was one fruit there, hanging low, big as a softball. He tested its weight under his hand. Soft, fuzzy, ripe.

"Toby?" Jareth asked, from very far away. There was a tension and a balance between that voice and the peach in his palm. "That fruit is not for you."

"But I want one," Bee whispered.

"You mustn't," Jareth's distant voice answered. There was no anger in his voice, only gentle warning.

Bee gripped the fruit. Just a small tug, and it would be free. It would be his._ He wants me to. He says no but he means yes. He wants me to have it. I want one_ _so I get to have one!_

"Bee?" Jareth asked, but his tone seemed seductive.

_No_. Bee dropped his hand by sheer force of will. It was covered with a thin layer of dull yellow dust. He rubbed it off on his pants and turned to look at Jareth. The Goblin King's expression, as per usual, was mobile and readable. It was turning from anger and anticipation into guarded approval. Jareth exhaled slowly.

"Sorry," Bee said.

"It's all right now." Jareth's strange eyes held golden reflections of the fruit. "_Bloom-down-cheeked peaches. Peaches with a velvet nap. Sweet to tongue and sound to eye_." Bee blinked slowly. Those eyes were pools of syrup, dilations like flickers, like secret semaphores. He had the sense that Jareth was pleased to tempt him and pleased to see him resist temptation. "I understand the allure. But you wouldn't have liked it, once you'd eaten."

_Why would you let me get so close to something I'm not supposed to have?_ Bee wondered, disappointed. Jareth flashed him a dangerous and conspiratorial smile. _Oh. Was this some sort of test? Did I pass?_

"Try this instead," Jareth said, pulling a crystal out of his coat-pocket. He tossed it to Bee; when he caught it, it was a candy bar. "Come on then," Jareth said kindly, extending his hand. Bee took it, and they left the normal way, through a door that as soon as they were through it he couldn't see any more. He devoured the chocolate, but wondered when dinner would happen. "Let's make ourselves pretty for Sarah and Finnvarrah."

* * *

Their stop came, the very last stop, and Bee and Finn helped each other in silence, adjusting their bundles and packages and items atop and around their backpacks. The weight was formidable, but Bee felt some pride, keeping up with Finn's longer strides. He could handle the load and the walk and the general process of keeping healthy and alive while living the way Finn did.

"We'll go to Jollymaker's first. Two birds, one stone. You'll like it," Finn said as they climbed the steps. He offered Bee a peacemaking hand, but Bee didn't take it. The city blew cold from the air and hot from doorways and grates, starch and sweets and exhaust. It smelled good to Bee. They went slowly and were generally ignored by everyone, which was one of the first tricks Finn had taught him. Eyes slid off them before quite making contact, and people parted to let them pass.

"Most people don't really see things if they're all around them," Finn had explained once—perhaps the very first lesson he'd taught Bee in the nature of glamour and camouflage. "Who looks for an individual grain of sand on the beach, or for one specific ant in the anthill? We're in a city full of abandoned people. Watch them and carry a profile like theirs. Be someone invisible. Then it's easy to be ignored." And then later, when Bee had haltingly learned these basics—though he failed sometimes, because he was curious about faces and because he got cruised, little red flags of desire and attention that broke his concentration—Finn had taught him to move in others' wakes. "Etheric body chemtrails," Finn had said dreamily, toked to the gills and watching his hand move. Bee, likewise tripping balls, had seen what Finn meant. If you stood or walked behind someone crackling with a particular type of feeling, whether that was anger or beauty or drunkenness or insanity or self-importance, you could slip into the lee of that energy and pass unnoticed. Finn was a patient teacher, making him practice and practice until he felt he was dissolving into the shadows and daydreams of every person they tailed, hopscotching with delirious ease, the emotional equivalent of hitching skateboard momentum off of moving cars.

"They'll see you, but they won't see you," Finn had finally said with pride. "And if they remember you, it'll only be a fragment of a dream gone by the time they take a morning piss. Now you're ready."

"Ready for what?"

"Ready to go on the hunt." And that was how it had begun, but those first lessons still remained useful.

Hopping from one street to another, they came to one of the little shops in the city that was narrow and deep. "Jollymaker's Toys," the legend read in faded striped letters over the door. "New and Old." _Diagon Alley_, Bee thought, as they went into the peppermint fume. He looked around and touched nothing, no matter how it beguiled.

The proprietor, who Finn addressed as Mr. Jollymaker himself, looked like a Jewish version of Santa Claus, and had the Yiddish accent to match. He regarded Finn warmly over his half-moon spectacles, and they were soon engaged in a comfortable conversation which devolved naturally into haggling over some of the items the two of them had brought back from the Market. After Finn unloaded him, Bee moved freely around the shop, letting his eyes taste all the marvels. There were tin toys and automatons and wax dolls and wind-up robots that shot sparks from their mouths. There were model planes and clockwork birds and kites shaped like dragons and phoenixes. There were jacks and chalk and tiny decks of cards, and tall glass cylinders full of dice and yo-yos and shimmering sparkling bouncing balls of all sizes.

* * *

"My workshop," Jareth had said, opening the door for Bee. Somewhere between the atrium and this room God only knew where in the twisting passages of the castle, they'd picked up a goblin tail. Jareth smiled indulgently. "Oh, come on, then," he said, and the goblins scrambled in like a pack of ugly puppies.

Jareth tossed his coat over the shoulders of a dressmaker's dummy already wearing two coats while the goblins conspired mischief and havoc. A few of them dragged a chair to a clear patch of space and dusted off the seat, offering it to the king. The Goblin King had Finn's trick of making every chair into a throne and every throne into a chaise lounge.

Bee had looked around, impressed. It was a sight to behold. There were wardrobes belching out a bigger variety of cloth and clothing than Bee had ever seen outside the garment district, and an old fashioned foot-treadle sewing machine. There was a workbench with clamps and chisels and tools and oils and resins, and a nearly-finished high cradle shaped like an eggshell. And there were musical instruments and sheets of mundane-looking paper scrawled with musical notations. And more.

"When do you sleep?" Bee asked. A triad of goblins had gathered up scissors and a basin of water and an apple-crate and began to cut the Goblin King's long, smooth and enviable hair into a species of disaster. Another goblin knelt down at the king's feet and proceeded to polish his boots to black mirrors.

"Oh, I fit it in here and there," Jareth drawled, closing his eyes under the goblin's noisy ministrations. "It's very satisfying to make things, Toby. Sarah's busy making something. I feel the need to keep up, though my work pales in comparison."

Bee pushed his hair back behind his ears. It was long enough to always be in the way and short enough to refuse a ponytail. Jareth's hair was a type of wealth he seemed determined to squander, though the goblins seemed to be enjoying themselves.

"Would you like a haircut?" Jareth asked. "There's another chair around here somewhere." The goblin wielded the scissors like he was intending to trepan Jareth's skull. Toby winced with every pass, but Jareth looked blissed.

"I… I'd prefer it goblins didn't cut my hair." He looked dubiously at Jareth's coiffeur, which was beginning to look distinctly cockatiel-with-forelocks.

"Your loss," Jareth said. The barbarous trio hopped down and tilted a hand mirror up for Jareth to inspect himself with. He ran a hand over the pillaged wasteland and seemed genuinely pleased with the effect. "Very nice," he said. "Well done."

"Well done for a one-handed stroke victim," Bee said under his breath, and the goblins laughed uproariously. So did Jareth. He stood up and whipped the drape from his neck. When he picked up the scissors and gestured for Bee to take his seat, Bee hesitated.

"Well?" Jareth said, clicking the scissors open and shut.

_Hair grows back_, Bee reminded himself. _And Finn said if the fae ever offer any gifts, it's important not to give a direct 'no_.' He sighed and sat down. "Just please don't give me the usual, if that's what you've got. I don't want to look ridiculous."

Jareth lifted the curly weight of Bee's hair and let it go again, and began to snip. "Do you feel ridiculous?"

"All the time." Bee said. "Cool as sandals with socks. Useful as tits on a spider. Ridiculous." He sighed again.

"Well then. A haircut can hardly make matters worse." Jareth cut hair more slowly than the goblins did, which was more reassuring than his logic. He pushed Bee's head one way and then another, and Bee found himself relaxing. Strange to talk to someone who wasn't Finn, or his parents, but… he liked Jareth, and he had the feeling Jareth liked him, too, on his own merits.

"Why do you feel ridiculous?" Jareth asked him, cutting away.

"I guess… I don't feel like myself. Like who I want to be. Sarah's always been exactly who she wants. But it's like her and Dad and Mom have this image of who I'm supposed to be, and I feel weird when I try to be myself. Like it's not allowed."

"Does Finn allow you?" Jareth asked gently.

"Sometimes he does. Sometimes he doesn't."

"Oh?"

"He treats me like a baby. All… indulgent one minute and condescending the next."

"How would you prefer he treated you?"

"Like a boyfriend. I want him. I want him." He was surprised by the fierceness of his own greed. Jareth paused in his snipping and held Bee's skull in his hands for a moment.

"Should I give him to you? I can, you know."

Bee tried to turn his head, but Jareth held him by the temples, the scissors cool against his skin. "Come now, young Toby. You think I can't? Finnvarrah is mine. I made him. And I can dispose of him in any way I choose. Even give him to you, if you so wish."

Bee concentrated on his breathing. _Holy shit. He's not even kidding. He'd give me Finn. He could. Finn does whatever he says. And if he told him to be mine… I'd _have_ him. Own him_. The idea was arousing.

"And he'd obey me the way he does you," Bee murmured. "Why are you offering him to me like this?"

Jareth cut a few more locks of his hair before answering. "Do you remember the first time we met?"

"I do. I shouldn't. I was too little. But I remember you. I think we had… conversations. But that's impossible. I'm probably just remembering what Sarah told me. I was just a baby."

"I speak fluent baby," Jareth said in a tone that was definitely not a put-on. "And I remember our talks very well. You were such a nice little chap that I wanted to keep you. I would have turned you into a goblin. The Goblin Prince."

Bee turned to look at Jareth and discovered that Jareth had held the mirror up in front of his face, so that Bee was looking at his own face instead. There was an expression in his own face that Bee didn't recognize. It was the covetously superior look that bothered him so much when Jareth turned it on Finn. His hair was a cap of blond fuzz that came to a sting-point over his forehead. His eyes were a blue so pale they seemed white. He looked spoiled and regal and cruel. He looked sharp and dangerous and desirable. The goblins clustered around him, paying him homage, and he was more beautiful by contrast with their ugliness.

"But kittens turn into cats and babes into boys, and you would have wanted more than me. Perhaps there's a story where Sarah lost our game and you grew up with me, and perhaps one day inevitably your eyes fell on Finnvarrah and you fell in love. Perhaps I would have been jealous of having your attentions divided. Perhaps I would have destroyed you both rather than receive less than my due." His voice was smoky and dark. "Or perhaps certain people belong with each other and only a fool would separate them. I would have tried to make you into my son, Toby. Tell me, whose son are you?"

Bee looked in the mirror. He saw strands of brown in his blondness.

"My father is Robert Williams."

Jareth lowered the mirror like harlequin taking off his mask, so that just his eyes showed.

"And what does Robert Williams' son say to my offer?"

Bee gulped. "Thank you for the haircut," he said, shaken, "But I'll work things out with Finn myself, if it's all the same to you."

"Wise choice, Bee," Jareth said, smiling slightly, putting the mirror down. The feeling in the room lightened almost immediately.

"Speaking of those long-ago conversations," Jareth said, "You made a few grand proclamations in bodily effluvia. I think I had to change my clothes six or seven times, and we had at least one very serious discussion about toilet training." Jareth put down the scissors. "But mostly you were pleasant and obliging, and fearless. It pleases me that you haven't changed that much." He dusted the last few strands of hair off Toby's ears and went to the wardrobe and pulled out the black leather jacket, the one with the gold stripes on the biceps. "Since you won't accept Finnvarrah, this will have to do instead." He discarded Toby's torn coat like it was trash, and helped him put the new one on. It fitted exactly, as if it had been made just for him.

"It was meant to be your Christmas present, but you need it now. What do you think? Is it cool?"

"Wow," Bee said, inspecting himself in the wardrobe mirror. "It's really cool." There were leather gloves in the side-pockets to match, and his head lifted out of the rolled collar like the pistil of a lily.

"You are most definitely your father's son, but I like to think I've had an influence," Jareth said. "Oh! This is also for you." He tucked an ornate key into Bee's unzipped breast pocket. "Use it tonight along with your considerable natural charm."

"What is it?"

"The key to Finnvarrah's room." Jareth laughed salaciously. "Well?" he said, interrupting himself. The goblins joined in with bawdy laughter. And Bee had laughed too.

* * *

"For you, nice boy." A flossy-haired elfin girl in a candycane petticoat offered him a wooden yo-yo. Bee startled, his thoughts interrupted. Before he knew what he was doing, his hand had closed on it.

"I'm not here to buy," Bee said regretfully.

"Trade me a kiss for it," she suggested.

Bee thought about kissing her cheek, but it was a nice yo-yo. Her lips tasted of licorice, but he kept it brief. She blushed and simpered, and Bee smiled at her.

Finn cleared his throat. He and the proprietor were both looking at them, Jollymaker mildly and Finn less mildly. "Bee, let's be on our way. Thank you, Elder, for your suggestions. I'll follow up and get back to you."

"And the other matter?" the old man asked.

"I promise to put it near the top of my to-do list," Finn said. "Just remember the Goblin King and Red Branch affectionately when it's done."

And it was back out into the city.

* * *

"The way you handle these situations, Bee, gods be good." Finn shook his head in disgust.

"What situation?" Bee was winding the yo-yo as they waited for the bus.

"Kissing his daughter right in front of him. Like she's something on offer. Lucky I got the information I needed before you pulled that stunt."

"Well she asked!" Bee retorted. "You make such a big deal out of these people, and the Labyrinth too. But they're Babytown Frolics. I can handle myself." He tossed his hair and was halfway through giving a superior smile when Finn grabbed his arm and then his jaw and squeezed his smile to death.

"Bee." Finn said, "You're so wrong it's painful."

"Jealous much?" Bee said around Finn's fingers.

Finn let him go. "A bit," he admitted.

Bee made a great and resentful show of rubbing his face. "All right then. Stop being the world's biggest asshole. Those people weren't like the werewolf or the shuck," He glared at Finn. "_Those_ things were dangerous. All the Free People seem… nice. The Labyrinth and the goblins are like that too. Nice, harmless. I can totally deal."

"Harmless," Finn said, temper flaring again. He had the urge to grab Bee and shove him against the alleyway and fuck some sense into him. _Which is probably what he wants. He wants my attention. And if he can't get it with sex, he'll try getting it through sheer contrariness_. He settled for running his hands through his hair and making it all stand on end. "Bee, the Labyrinth may seem harmless to you, but that's only because the Goblin King bends over backward for you. The Free People won't unless there's something in it for them. I wish you'd listen to me." He reached out and took Bee's hand. Bee flinched away, but then took it. The bus arrived; they grabbed the seats in the back, sprawling out side by side.

"I listen to you. I do everything you ask me to do. I get things done. And you know what to expect from me. You, on the other hand…" Bee shook his head in disgust and zipped his collar up higher. He had new black leather gloves to match his coat, with tiny gold stripes around the knuckles. "You push and pull and run around me. You get me off and then talk to me over breakfast like nothing happened. You've gotta stop doing that. I'm not a goddamned… mascot."

Finn's heart—_and my groin, he's beautiful as Baldur and lickable as candy_—thudded. He wondered if Bee even knew how delicious and sexy he looked in his black-and-gold jacket, his hair trimmed off his face, eyes blue as lasers, burning through the landscape, cutting through everything, cutting down every damned bit of his resolve. He looked like someone who was going to live forever, someone who could dance over the Leviathan's braces and kick in its teeth.

Something more had happened between Bee and the Goblin King than just a series of errands and a change in style. Finn didn't flatter himself that the change had come from leaning over the promise he'd made to Sarah. Bee's proposition and what followed the other night had been a symptom and not a cause. Something that had shaken this larval creature out of the honeycomb and into the next stage of life. Something subtle, something strange. He was ripe and ready to gather rosebuds and strew cherries and dare to eat peaches. _And here I am, thumb figuratively up my butt while this jim dandy wants nothing more than to gather my literal rosebud. I'm being an idiot_.

"How long are you going to be mad about me for last night?" Finn asked.

"Forever," Bee said, but he smiled a little bit.

"Really?" Finn asked, tangling his leg with his, pressing his thigh against his. "Forever and ever and ever?"

"Yes," Bee said primly, raising his chin a notch.

"What if I'm really very sorry?" Finn breathed dangerously in his ear. "What if I'm ready to perform an act of contrition?"

"Our stop is next," Bee replied. "You won't have time to get on your knees."

"How'd you know our stop is next?" Finn asked with surprise.

"Because you're flirting with me. You always have some escape route ready." Bee turned his laservision on Finn. Finn realized, with delight and fear, that Bee had made him blush. "I've got your number now, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. You should be careful."

_I don't know what happened, but somehow he's right. He's gone from being a glorified pet to a junior partner._ Finn grinned at him. The boy returned it with the icy condescending smile of an assassin princess. _And he thinks the Labyrinth is_ nice_, when it can do things like this to mortal men. When it can do things like you to me, Bee. Gods be good. You're so much more than I ever hoped for.  
_

* * *

**Next… Chapter Five: "The Devil"**

* * *

Thanks to my beta, Frances Osgood!

The phrases "bloom-down-cheek'd peaches," "peaches with a velvet nap," and "sweet to taste and sound to eye" are all from Rossetti's "Goblin Market," which you can bet Jareth has read and gotten a good laugh over. "Sweet to Tongue and Sound to Eye" is also the title of a Labyfic by futurejelly, which put these particular verses in my mind.

Those of you disappointed by lack of Sarah-Jareth smooches and sweaty snugglebunnies should check out TheRealEatsShootsAndLeaves "Color Magic Color" to get your fix on. Panda just finished "Short Stacks" as well, and if you haven't been eating them pancakes then there's something missing from your life.

When I'm not writing this fat 20-30 chapter epic, I'm reading LaraWinner's "Fragile" and blown away by how good it is. Laraaaaa! Updaaaaaaaaate! Pleeeeeeez!

* * *

**Panda**: Your reviews are the best reviews ever. Please keep tossing me those cheesypoofs.

**Zayide**: To be fair, Sarah and Jareth were on their honeymoon and not particularly interested in anything but themselves. They were warned. They ignored the warning.

**Askeebe**: Bee is growing up right before our eyes. The Goblin King doesn't name him as family lightly.

**Jetredgirl**: Not much steam, but Finn's certainly basting in his own juices this chapter. *rimshot*

**Jalen**: He keeps calling her that because every time he does, she squawks. And that's funny enough to be worth the bruises.

**Fanny**: It's a French bedroom farce! Thank goodness at least Jareth is on Toby's side.

**radar wing**: I think Jareth's portrayed that way a bit in the film. Certainly he seems to resent it when he provokes responses he doesn't want. That final monologue… whew.

**Galileo**: Squee! I made Finn and this version of Toby! Original characters tend not to fare so well in Labyfic, but Finn seems to be thriving. I'm glad you like him.


	5. The Devil

**Chapter Five: The Devil**

* * *

**Author's Note: **The last quarter of this chapter contains some gruesome imagery and fantasy violence. Reader discretion is advised.

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Five:**

"The Root of All Evil"—Abney Park  
"Wish"—Nine Inch Nails  
"Cry, Little Sister"—G. Tom Mac

* * *

The music thumped a beat in Bee's belly.

_Rise  
Rise  
Rise  
Fall deep from the Earth and rise…_

_…a voice in the echo of black Heaven_

_Rise_  
_Rise_  
_Rise_

_Finn, where are you?_ Bee called with all his heart, a heart made of fear, a fear rising,_ rising rising, an echo of**—**_

_No_! The song was like a spell, trying to capture the rhythm of his breath, the pattern of his thoughts. And his fear was attracting attention he couldn't afford. Pale faces dusted with ash turned to look at him, eyes blood-rimed and darting quick in the flickering darkness on the dance floor. He pushed his fear aside, let those glances part on him like flowing water.

* * *

"This is going to be just ridiculously dangerous," Finn had said. "It might be a good idea, Bee, if you didn't get involved at all."

"It's a two-man plan," Bee had said solidly. "You can't do it without me."

"Or we could just call it all off," Finn had said. "We need a midwife, but we don't need that particular midwife."

"We made that midwife a promise, though," Bee reminded him.

"… I'm afraid," Finn said blankly. His fingers paused over the drawing of their plan, fingertips pulling together as if to crumple it entirely up.

"Finn," Bee said pragmatically, as he came to sit on Finn's knee on the park bench. He touched his forehead to his, feeling the pleasant firmness of his horns. "We can do this. We can."

Bee had expected some clever quip, some retort, but instead Finn kissed him, beard scratching against his beardless chin, flavor of pepper and almonds and cheap beer on his lips. Finn's kiss was fearful and chaste, and Bee grabbed him hard at the place where his collarbone met his neck. "It _will_ work, Finn." He kissed him again, harder, feeling lust rise instead of courage. Transmittable, this feeling, in lips and hands and hot breath, because Finn's arms came around his back and urged him on, pressing him to his mouth harder. "Okay?" Bee asked. "Okay, Finn?" He slapped Finn's cheek gently.

"Okay," Finn replied, but with less enthusiasm than Bee had hoped for. He turned on his knee, rutting subtly against it, and pulled Finn's attention back to their schematics laid out on the park's chessboard.

"Let's go over the plan again," Bee said. He smiled as Finn's hands wrapped warm around his waist.

* * *

The light in the club should have been black, but to Bee it seemed all dusty sepia, the washed-out tones of a dead basement. And it smelled. It smelled like old teeth and hot copper and medical-grade disinfectant. He wondered if anyone else could smell it. He wondered how many of the guests at this party were trying to get away, or had tried. And he wondered where the spider of this web kept her parlor. _I can see_, Bee thought, closing his eyes. _I can see things other people don't. I can see through anything. So why can't I see you, Finn? Where are you?_

* * *

Bee wasn't half impressed with the cheap bodega that was their last stop in a long day of long stops. It was in a dingier borough than Jollymaker's, and was consequently a lot less deep and a lot more dirty. This neighborhood was so sad it would need to climb a few rungs on the ladder before it could join Spanish Harlem. _Tacky_, Bee thought, looking around at the cartons of cigarettes and fake flower arrangements and scratch-tickets under plexiglass. _Tacky and superstitious_, he amended, seeing a few lit saints' candles on a makeshift altar near the cash register, and the dusty apothecary's jars of mushy-moldy looking herbs stacked on the backboard. Finn asked the cashier a question in staccato Spanish. Bee caught the word _bruja_, but nothing else. The woman hooked a thumb over to the back of the store without looking up from her inventory.

_Cheap and _dirty_ and ticky-tackaroo_, Bee thought. The floor was sticky under his shoes and there were fruitflies on the bananas. The door marked "Office" was open. A fat old woman in nurse's scrubs sat at the desk making notations in a small ledger.

"Miss Zoe?" Finn asked.

The woman looked up and evaluated them both carefully before snorting and turning back to her book. "Who's asking?"

"Your name has been mentioned in certain circles. Your skills have been noted and praised."

"You didn't answer my question," she said.

Bee squinted at her. There was something… odd about her, something compelling.

Finn flourished the tail of his coat like the proudest robin redbreast. "Don't you have eyes? Can't you tell? Or is the Red Branch come down so far that you can't recognize one of its brothers?"

"I recognize. I just have no idea why the Red Branch would come looking for me to ply my trade. Unless you boys have finally succeeded in turning your _culo_ into _coño_. What do you want with me, carefully nameless Brother of the Red Branch?"

Bee eased down his pack and quietly removed his sketchbook from the front pocket. Something about her eyes, that was where the strangeness began. Her eyes were luminous, wet, green. Not green like Sarah's, green like slime, like lightning bugs.

"I've come on behalf of another, you've rightly guessed, gracious lady. A woman, a star among women, a jewel, a treasure."

"One of the Free People?" Miss Zoe said, momentarily interested. She stared at Finn, then shook her head, jowls jiggling. "No. I would have heard before this. So who? Speak plainly. I'm running out of patience."

"A human woman," Finn said coaxingly. "The wife of the Goblin King."

She snapped her ledger closed and stood up. She seemed very tall, seven feet tall, eight, massive as a semi truck. "The Goblin King. Well. I know exactly who you are now, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. I know your reputation. I want nothing to do with your king."

"Our king!" Finn insisted.

"No, not mine. _Yours_. I want no business with the _Hidalgos_. Not with the Goblin King, not with the King of Winter, not with any of them. They're all thieves and killers. All of them." She seemed angry. She also seemed...afraid, big like the puffed back of a cat. Bee knew the word for that. It was illusion, glamour. She wasn't what she seemed.

"My sister is the wife of the Goblin King," Bee said. He took her fear and anger and let it amplify him, until he felt ten feet, twenty, until he felt like he could burst open the roof with just the strength of his shoulders and back. "Listen to us."

"_Your_ sister," Miss Zoe said, shrinking back to human proportions. She pinched Bee by the chin, and he discovered that he, too, had snapped to actual size. "Yours in particular, neh? How is it you play with fairy magic, and a human boy? You are his slave, servant, pet?" Her acid eyes eroded him.

"Partner in crime?" Bee offered, wishing his voice didn't crack, but she only smiled and let him go.

"Tell me, then, your sister, is she bespelled? Under enchantment? You answer me, pale boy. Is she different than she used to be?"

"She's not as sad as she used to be," he said with quiet meaning. "I think she was looking for him for a long time."

"She's like my brother, then." She looked at Finn with sorrow and warning. "He was tall, and beautiful, gente de bronce like your compa here. _He_ went looking for his doom among the _Hidalgos_, and he found it." She crossed herself and muttered an incantation to some saint. And then she sat down again, exhausted by her outburst, and cupped her eyes in her hands. It was a strangely girlish gesture. "I can't get involved. I can't. I won't." she said, but she seemed to be talking to herself.

Finn took a seat opposite her in a folding chair and began a soothing and beguiling monologue of comforting nothings, which seemed to calm her. _It's there, in her eyes, the difference, _he thought. As Finn continued talking her down, Bee pulled his materials from his pack, propped one foot against the cinderblock wall and began to sketch her, using his thigh as a desk. Darker, harder lines slowly overlaid his initial tentative pencil. It was rare that he couldn't capture the essence of a person or a creature in a few strokes, but Miss Zoe was a hard get.

"What happened to your brother exactly?" Bee asked, not looking up from his work. The pressure he was putting on the pencil was hard enough to hurt his hand, as if he could dig the truth out if he pressed hard enough.

"This Gentrywoman, she cracked him open and sucked out his _vis_, his soul, like it was a tasty chunk of marrow. The _Hidalgos_, they do what they want, and what this one wanted was to eat my brother. And to kill my sisters and my mothers and my fathers when they went to rescue him. The ruin of my House. And now I'm the only one left."

"You could have come to one of us," Finn said kindly. "Any of the Houses would have been obliged to help you. There aren't that many of us, people like you and me. We would have taken you in. Or you could have come to the Labyrinth. The Goblin King isn't like them. He's… good. And he loves us, you know."

"That's such a lie," Miss Zoe sniffled, reaching for the tissues. "Doesn't it fork your tongue to lie like that? My family is worse than dead, and where was _Rey_ _Ladrónde Niños_ then? Nowhere. We're toys to them, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. Toys to _him_. Game pieces. Pawns in the great game they play. No. I've decided. Abduct some human doctor when your sister's time comes, and leave me out of it."

_There she is_, Bee decided_. I've got her_. He tossed his sketchpad onto the table between them.

He watched Miss Zoe look at the sketch. The jowled and wrinkled face, the bad teeth, the dull hair. But he'd captured a slim bar of something else, a view from a sliding peephole, of luminous eyes, the pointed tips of ears, youth and beauty. She looked, and she touched her own face, as if remembering.

"You're the only one in your family left." Bee said gently. "Hiding here, never going anywhere but where your luck takes you, and then scurrying back to this grimy hole as soon as you can?" He shook his head. "You're afraid because you think this creature that hurt you and yours is still after you. But _we_ found you. Others can find you too. There's nowhere to hide."

She looked over at him, trembling. _The eyes. That's where the truth of her is, under this glamour_.

"I don't understand a lot of the ways you people do things, but I know you believe in taking care of your family." Bee crossed his arms. "I believe in that too. My sister wants a midwife. I bet you want something too. We can talk a trade." He could feel Finn desperately trying to catch his attention, but he kept them fixed on the young-old child-crone in front of him.

Bee kept his voice cool, but he felt a cruel smile beginning over his teeth. "Miss Life, have you considered _revenge_?"

"Yes," she said quietly. "I have considered revenge."

And the rest was all details.

* * *

"Why did you do that?" Finn exploded at him as they left the bodega and walked to their bus stop, lightly loaded up again with items Finn had wanted for their hunt. "Why did you make that offer?"

"Well you agreed to it," Bee said, winding his yo-yo, unperturbed.

"What choice did I have?" Finn asked. "Why, Bee?" He grabbed the boy and shook him.

"Chilly down," Bee said. "Do you think it's right that someone can come in and hurt people like that and no one does anything?" His string had unravelled; he wound it up again. "There's no justice for people like her. Didn't you say, didn't you say when you asked me to come away with you, that you were all about keeping things right? Protecting the weak? Well?" He spun out the yo-yo and reeled it back after making it sleep for a moment. "Are we heroes or just… hit men?"

"Heroes," Finn said, grasping his hair in exasperation. "We're heroes. But this is going to be like Cuchulain against all of Connacht."

"Eh?"

"David versus Goliath."

"Didn't David win? And with nothing more than a yo-yo." He swung it around-the-world and felt it snap back into his fingers.

"Sling. It was a sling. And that story was probably bullshit anyway. Gods be good, Bee!" Finn huffed and turned away, walking ahead of him. Bee stretched his legs to keep up. "She's probably House Crocus. Or was, when it existed. I've heard some bad rumors about them."

"Bad rumors?"

"They picked a fight with one of the Gentry—one of the fae—from the Winter Court, and all got killed for their trouble."

Bee struggled to close the distance and caught up after a few scissor leaps. "You pick fights all the time."

"Yeah, but only ones I can win. The Gentry, honey-Bee, are ones with whom not to fuck. You know this. Would you pick a fight with the Goblin King?"

Bee thought about this. He remembered the weight of the peach under his hand. He remembered Jareth's expression when he'd thought Bee was going to defy him and steal from him. And he remembered Jareth's offer, and of what might-have-been. "I would if I had to," Bee said. "Finn." He pulled Finn up to a stop and snuggled in close. "I would if I had to." He tilted his face up and gave Finn his best beguiling look. "Don't be such a pussy."

"Cuchulain against all of Connacht and me without a Gae Bulga," Finn said.

"I've got your gay bulge right here," Bee said, grasping him through his pants. And they kissed, deep and hard, clutching at tongues like last straws.

* * *

It took the three days to finalize their plans. Bee had wanted to go full in, guns blazing, the very moment they concluded their meeting with the midwife, but Finn had explained that his proposal was suicidal. "This won't be like anything we've done before," he had said, as they ate their dinner of remaindered lo mein and trashed packages of meatloaf dinner, just an hour past expiration, still warm. The weather wanted to snow but hadn't, and they spread their food over an empty chess table at the local park. "This will be more like…"

"Going down in a blaze of glory?" Bee suggested, slurping noodles.

"Eh. What's said is said, and done is done, and half a chance is more than none." He stole one of Bee's candied carrots.

"So why don't we rally a whole bunch of your family and just march in there and deal with her?" Bee asked. "Numerical superiority?" _And I'd like to meet your family_, Bee thought, _I'd really like to see this Red Branch you're always talking about_.

"There's no such thing as numerical superiority when it's ants versus boot," Finn said. "Well, conceivably there could be, but we can't muster those sorts of numbers."

"Well, you're magic. All the people I've met with you are magic. You're saying it's not enough?"

"I can use magic. Most of the Free People can use magic. But the Gentry? Fae, Rakshasa, Sidhe. They _are_ magic. Raw, wild magic governed by unstable personalities. No souls. No need for souls." He looked at the boy. "Your story-learning is ridiculously poor, considering who your sister is, but you seem to know your Bible, at least."

"Ten years of Sunday School," Bee said. "Want me to quote Leviticus?"

"_And the four beasts had each of them six wings about him; and they were full of eyes within: and they rest not day and night, saying, Holy, holy, holy, Lord God Almighty, which was, and is, and is to come._ The Revelation of St. John the Divine. But holy means _other_. The fae are to the Free People what angels were to Isaiah. Other, other, other."

Bee swallowed hard around the sudden dryness of his food. "They're angels? Gods?"

"Close enough for government work. You look pale. I guess you're finally starting to understand what you've gotten us into. So if we do this, we'll do it alone. No reason to drag anyone else into this when it can't make a difference to the outcome."

"We should have brought a bigger boat," Bee muttered.

"Bee, ain't no boat bigger enough. What we do have are the right hooks, and the right bait to land that shark."

"Me?" He couldn't help himself; he quailed at the idea.

"No." Finn stole his last carrot. "This time,_ I'm_ the bait."

* * *

The lair was a nightclub, thumping with bass and discordant screams in the dark. And the nightclub was a lair. And in the lair there was a predator.

_How doth the little busy Bee_  
_Improve each shining Hour,_  
_And gather Honey all the day_  
_From every opening Flower!_

_In works of Labour or of skill_  
_I would be busy too:_  
_For Satan finds some mischief still_  
_For idle hands to do._

_How doth the little crocodile  
Improve his shining tail,  
And pour the waters of the Nile  
On every golden scale!_

_How cheerfully he seems to grin,  
How neatly spreads his claws,  
And welcomes little fishes in  
With gently smiling jaws!_

* * *

"Okay, now look," Finn said on their third switchback through the same street. Finn had spent some of their precious and limited resources for a cab. Bee did, and saw the entrance to the club. It was like a mouth to some cavern, low to the ground, people clustered in line to get in.

"I see it," Bee said.

"That's the entrance," Finn said. They got out ten blocks away and set up their scout camp in the nearest park. "Once we get in, there'll be some inner sanctum, some core place where she lives. We'll have to find our way in deeper once we get inside."

* * *

The club was thick with people wearing paint and silk and chrome jewelry and corsetry that looked like torture devices. Bee kept his eyes open in the strobing lights, looking for that passage further in. He slid from one cluster of debauched body-mod aficionados to another, grasping for any changes in the texture of the air, the light. And then the light began to change, became the ugly orange of sodium lamps.

_I'm crossing over into the other, the further, a reality that isn't quite this one_. He shivered in his jacket and felt again for the precious weapons he carried with him. _Finn, I'm coming for you. Hang on._

* * *

"So here's where we have weapons superiority," Finn said, gathering supplies from the bodega under Miss Zoe's watchful eyes. "Salt," he said, pulling out four indigo canisters. "Cold iron," he said, laying down two paring-knives. "And her name." He held out the scrap of receipt where Miss Life had scrawled the name in question. Finn had rewritten it phonetically several times. _Oh-NO-skill-is. Oh-no-SKELL-yes. Ono-skull-YAYS_. Miss Life had cautioned, and Finn had reiterated, that a name like this was too dangerous to repeat out loud, for fear of attracting the bearer's attention before they were ready for her.

"Which one is it?" Bee had asked in dismay.

"The first. Probably." Bee was not reassured by her reply.

"The salt will bind in the four cardinal directions. Her name will bind her above and below. And the iron… that fixes the center. There are other ways to do it, but for our purposes, this is the safest. But we'll have to coax her down into some sort of physical form first. She'll want to see me. She'll want to touch me." Finn looked at Miss Zoe. "Just like she did with your family. The second we walk out your door, it would be really smart for you to immediately go to the Labyrinth and put yourself in the service of the Goblin King and Queen Sarah."

"How do I guarantee that my services have been paid for before I go?" she objected.

"Look, sister," Finn's voice was uncommonly sharp. "If we win, you've been overpaid. And if we lose, you're going to want to be elsewhere for the fallout. Underground isn't a bad destination. Unless you want to walk this bargain back?"

Miss Zoe had barely hesitated. "No. I want her dead."

* * *

On the third night, Finn had declared them ready. "Tomorrow night, we'll do this."

"Why not tonight?" Bee asked.

"Two reasons," Finn said. "One, it's Tuesday and you have a phone call to make. Two, I want to scout out the place in person first. She'll notice me. That's what we want, to stir the pot a little. She's an old one. She'll be cautious and curious when she notices me. She'll be looking to see if I'm armed and alone. I can't wear my coat or my swords. It'll be like a neon sign. 'Hello, my name is Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. I come from Red Branch, prepared to die.' But if she thinks I'm just a random one, all alone, she'll be eager and intemperate if I come back. She'll want to collect me. Or maybe attempt a seduction." He applied some eyeliner and stripped off his shirt, knotting it around his hips. His blue tattoos and his skin seemed to blaze through his undershirt. He could pass for a clubber, but Bee couldn't imagine this fae creature being cautious once she saw him. Finn was beautiful, and without his weapons or his coat, far too vulnerable for a predator to pass up. He shook his head in disapproval.

"We shouldn't split up," Bee said. "You aren't going in without me. What if she tries to snatch you right when she sees you?"

Finn had ducked his head and smiled to himself. "You're definitely right. We shouldn't split up."

"Right. Good. Okay." Bee dug his phone card out of his bag and walked the two blocks to the nearest working pay phone. His fury knew absolutely no limit when he returned after a pleasant fifteen minute chat and saw that Finn had gone ahead and left without him. But as the night wore on and Finn didn't return, the fury turned to worry and then to a loneliness so intense that he'd wrapped himself up in Finn's long wool coat, for the comfort of the smell of him.

Morning found him cold and alone in the park, but a note had slithered out of the red depths of Finn's coat, unseen until daylight.

_If Im not back by 10, abort mishin. Go to J—, ask for help. Don't Bee Stupid. Bee Smart. I love you. –F.V.  
_  
"God dammit, Finn!" Bee had yelled, startling the pigeons and drawing the unwanted attentions of a few retirees who had braved the November cold for their chess addiction. Noticed, out-of-place, alone, Bee had gone about the business of gathering their combined possessions, caching them in newspapers and a garbage bag inside a dumpster, and deciding how best to go in like the cavalry for a rescue.

_I wish I'd brought one of his swords_, Bee thought to himself. But he couldn't work them. The bronze blade and the iron one threw off his balance when he tried wearing them. It took him three attempts just to draw the iron blade out of the scabbard, and his wrist had trembled under the weight when he'd awkwardly pulled it free. _Your way then, Finn. Always your way!_

"You asshole," Bee cursed, and shoved the tears out of his eyes with his palms.

* * *

The club had opened like a flower to Bee. No one stopped him, no one saw him. He wandered until he felt something in the texture of the world change. And then there weren't any more people, any more crowd, only a dusty hole with medical waste and rusty implements tossed aside, and mannequins which were breathing. It was the antechamber to hell.

It was an art gallery. The Goblin King had his court of goblins, but here the courtiers were all marionettes. The living dolls moved slowly, limbs given movement by strings of sinew and dry veins that extended forever upward into an infinite darkness, all hanged men in animal masks. Everything here was beautiful in its horridness, bones and dust, nadir-space of flesh and art, and a stage, and an empty throne made of chrome and skin.

There was a circling pulsing golden light, a wheel within a wheel, that descended from the depths of the ceiling, flashing in the eyes, illuminating nothing. It floated down, aggressive and sharp-edged, and stopped. And the chair on stage was suddenly occupied by a beautiful white woman who had pits of darkness where her eyes ought to have been. Bee wasn't sure why exactly he felt it was a woman—hairless, flat-chested, gold needles pressed through her cheeks and ears—but it felt feminine. This was the thing they'd been looking for. This was the one who murdered people for fun.

_It_, he though. _More an it_. His belly trembled with sickness. Power seemed to flow off her in molten waves, and every wave was a type of malevolence. It wasn't a person, it was a presence. _Fae_, Bee thought. _Fae. Like the Goblin King. But he's so human, and she is_ not.

He would never mistake the fae for anything else magical or metaphysical after this. Never. Never again. He wanted to hide. He wanted to be a thousand miles away from here. He felt his balls struggling to pull into his stomach, and the rest of him wanted to follow, curl up and pop him inside-out of this world. And he would have run, but there was Finn, his belt buckled not around his waist but binding his arms back, leashed to a horned effigy to the Gentrywoman's left. There was Finn, shivering and ducking behind the gypsum figure, as if to avoid the attentions of the devil in this Hell.

_Bee Invisible_, Bee reminded himself. He could feel Finn's fear, and he stepped reluctantly into his wake, heart thundering like his, breath coming in silent gasps.

The _she_, the _it_, she watched the slow shuffle of her puppet courtiers. Bee recognized a few of them; they existed simultaneously in this space and in the club-space, ash-smeared, scarified, dead-eyed, without identity or will. The Gentrywoman's black eyes danced across each figure, and Bee realized with anger that she was playing with Finn, pretending to have forgotten him, pretending not to remember he was there. And then she laughed, belly arching, rubber apron falling decadently between spread white thighs. Her laughter smoothed the edges of the room into gritty chaos. And Finn cowered like a whipped dog.

Bee carefully counted thirty-two heel-toe steps backward, breathing only every third step. Unseen, invisible to this thing who had eyes only for Finn.

"Mutt," she called him. "Pretty mongrel puppy. Shall we play a game?" Her voice had rumors of other notes, unheard screams, beauty, cacophony. Bee wanted to put his hands over his ears.

Finn refused to answer. He turned his head away and pulled to the length of his tether, away from her. Bee lowered his eyes and listened. One wrong move, and he would be noticed. Once noticed, he would be dead.

Bee walked slowly to the left, scattering grains of salt from his pockets as he went. Small step by small step, never running, always turning, he slowly spiraled his way inward. He mastered his breath, which wanted to gasp with panic. He wanted not to breathe at all through his nose, because the bad smell that had curled his nostrils in the club was stronger here in the center of the nest, a rotten nightmare of spoiled meat and coppery-sweet blood, murder victims half-buried in wet plaster and papier-mache. Still, he kept walking, making the circle that would trap this inhuman creature, and hopefully get them both out of here alive.

"I'll engage her attention," Finn had said during their rehearsal, choreographing every move until Bee knew it with his body waking and sleeping. His adrenal glands were pumping out enough juice to lift a car, but he didn't falter. This was still the plan. Finn had engaged her attention. Bee's job was to be unnoticed, to _bind_.

"Mongrel puppy," she murmured in lover's tones. "Half-breed. The Judex made you. His signature is on you. Anyone of the brethren can see that." She kicked up her feet in joy as she stood. She had shoes like asses' feet, hooved and bloody. She came to Finn and grabbed him by the hair. "But I can improve on his art. I wonder how I'll improve on you?" She dragged his strappy t-shirt up to his throat, his pants around his hips, and fondled him dispassionately. One of her servants, zombie marionette, tottered over to her, gave her a stone-flake knife. Three more approached and held Finn still. Bee, horrified, almost missed a breath in his camouflaging pattern. He thought she was castrating him, and took his smothered sobs for stoic endurance. But his circle took him a few steps further, and he could see she was tracing the outline of one of the tattoos on Finn's hips, cutting shallowly and precisely, lifting off one perfect micrometer of skin, slapping it like decoupage on the body of the nearest servant.

"The Goblin King has strange aesthetics. But he went too far, making you and your kind." She sniffed at Finn's blood and drew back his eyelids one by one. "Too much like us, and too much like men. I'm here to make revisions. And you're so very textual." The knife cut around the edge of another tattoo. Not deep, not enough to do more than pierce the first layer of skin, strip it, slap it against her waiting servants like wet onionskin. Not enough to seriously injure or maim, just enough to hurt and humiliate.

"Is that what you did to the rest of them?" Finn said through clenched teeth. He jerked his head defiantly at her attendants. "Did you revise _them_?"

"Golden-eyed golden-skin, that's my charter. That's my nature. Shall I dig deeper, or are you ready to give over your flesh and play my game?"

"You've killed them," Finn said, gasping against the dead meat of the arms that kept him restrained. Bee could see his eyes, all golden, attention all on the Gentry. He hoped Finn couldn't see him either. This needed to work.

"All mortal flesh dies. Only we live forever. And if you are not immortal, how could you ever be one of us?" She threw her knife aside and grasped Finn again, one hand in his hair, one grabbing his crotch. Those strong pale hands squeezed and pulled like she was husking corn, and Finn arched and gave the first scream of pain Bee ever heard him give. She paid the scream no mind; she inhaled the scent of his open mouth and licked her lips.

Bee had finished his circuit; he wasn't going to let this go on for a single minute more. He pulled out the paring-knife from his breast pocket and cast it into the circle of salt.

"I name you Onoskelis," Bee said, voice cracking. "And I bind you by your name."

The Gentrywoman stared at him. Finn stared at him too. Then she laughed, and Bee felt terror overwhelm him. It hadn't worked. It hadn't. She surged forward on her tiptoe animal shoes, grinning wide enough to split her face, prepared to rip him into pieces and probably add him to her gallery of art.

Then she reached the perimeter of salt, and was cast back into the circle Bee had made. Her feet stamped and her hands clawed as she shouted obscenities at Bee in every language. "You dare!" she shrieked.

Finn had wasted no time after his first surprise. He jammed his feet against the stone effigy and used the leverage to break his leash and break out of her servants' arms. They seemed deadened, stilled. Their flesh-and-blood strings began to fray, one by one, with the snapping sounds of harpstrings. They slouched over into the dirt, unmoving, once they fell. And Finn was outside that circle, safe and free.

The fae shadowed Finn around the perimeter, striking out at it with sparks, testing for weakness. Bee met Finn halfway, ignoring her. "You okay?" he asked him, gently drawing his clothes back into place, unbuckling and unwinding the tangled weave of his bonds.

"My fucking 'jones," Finn said through gritted teeth, cupping his crotch.

"Yeah, well, if you hadn't snuck off last night then your balls wouldn't hurt now!" Bee embraced him, arms around his neck. "Don't ever do that again. Never-ever-ever. Promise me, Finn!"

"Ow! I'm sorry. I'm sorry!" He nuzzled his cheek against Bee's ear. "I won't, I promise." He tucked Bee under his arm. Some blood was seeping through his pants, but just a little. Bee helped him limp forward to face the Gentrywoman. Bee handed him the second carton of salt. Stiff-legged with pain, Finn kept his golden eyes on his target as he cast more salt through the circle. One slashing drift, two, three, and she was bound inside a triangle inside the circle. Three more, a hexagon. She cursed at them, but then changed her tone. She began to beg. Bee did as Finn did, and ignored her voice. Line after line of salt spiraled in, polyhedron upon polyhedron, narrowing the trap.

"Stay!" Finn said, half-crying and half-laughing. "Stay! Good dog." He staggered a little, and Bee caught him under the shoulders again.

The Gentrywoman was left with no place to stand except on the cold iron, and nowhere for her arms to go except above her head, as if she were rolled in an invisible carpet. She howled in rage, but then with pain. Her hooves sizzled and gave up smoke. She seemed to… begin to melt. That was the only way Bee could conceive of it. It wasn't gruesome, only slightly disgusting. A relief, like popping a zit. _What a world, what a world_.

Onoskelis, the fae, was quickly reduced to a puddle of bubbling golden liquid.

"Now we cauterize the wound she's left in reality," Finn said grimly. He slouched up with Bee's help, and walked to the very center, the bubbling golden pool. Toby handed him the lighter fluid.

Finn squirted the entire bottle into her remains, and then touched the flame to her. She went up in a column of black smoke and fire, into the endless black nothingness, the echo of a black Heaven. The ground tremored beneath their feet and the room began to crumble slightly around the edges.

"We've got to get out of here," Bee said, tugging at Finn's arm.

Finn shook him off and gone limping to one of the still bodies of her courtier-slave-puppets, and raised its eyelids. He flinched in disgust, and Bee saw that the eyes of the creature were gone, replaced with wads of carbuncled stone.

The edges of the room now resembled enormous ant-piles. "Finn, come on. They're dead! Leave them!"

"Which one has my skin?" Finn asked, going to another prone body. "Bee, help me!"

"Yes, sure. This way," Bee said, feeling like there was no time, that it was already too late, trying to discern the way out, and leading Finn with him. "Come on, this way."

Finn dug in his feet as he realized what Bee was doing, but, tired and hurt and overwrought, soon followed him again. "Damn her!" Finn cursed. "It's always like this. The Winter Court and the gentry do whatever they want to us, and nobody fights back. Nobody cares!"

"I care," he said. "The Goblin King cares, and Sarah too." Bee thought about this for a moment, and then asked in dawning horror, "Finn, the King of Winter… is he like that? Like _her_?"

"No, Bee. Worse than that. She was just an underling. He's her king."

"Sarah," Bee said, breathless. "Jareth. They're in real danger, aren't they?"

"Yes. So am I, Bee." Finn leaned hard on Bee's shoulder. "I need you to help me get to Red Branch. I think we're all in trouble."

"Okay, Finn," Bee said. "Okay." They stumbled out together as the inner sanctum of the Gentrywoman crackled into dust.

* * *

**Next... Chapter Six: "Temperance"**

* * *

_Thank you to my beta, FrancesOsgood, for her help and support._

_Various references made here. "You're going to need a bigger boat."**—** Jaws. "Hello, my name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." **—**The Princess Bride. "How Doth the Little Busy Bee..."**—**Isaac Watts. "How Doth the Little Crocodile"**—**Alice in Wonderland. If there are any I forgot to mark out for sheer negligence, please let me know in the comments._

_Onoskelis's name and nature can be found in The Key of Solomon. She's real, and she's not doing anything here that she hasn't done a thousand times before. For a nice series of stomach-turning visuals for her lair, please enjoy the video for Bowie's "The Hearts Filthy Lesson," which directly inspired them._

_Well? Are you not entertained? Please leave me a comment and don't skimp. It sustains my art._

* * *

**Panda**: Jareth owns Finn and would have given him to Toby. Jareth is also concerned about Finn's good opinion of him. The two motivations are not mutually exclusive, as we'll learn in the next chapter. Jareth can be a good guy, but he's not exactly a nice guy.

**Jetredgirl**: I want a lock of his hair!

**brylcream** **queen**: Thank you so much. He's a challenging 'voice' and it's gratifying to hear I've gotten him right.

**Askeebe**: Bee's not above being sexually manipulative when he thinks he knows what's best. Silly Bee.

**irgroomer**: PHRASING!

**Jalen**: I'm glad you like Finby, because this chapter is nothing but.

**Kwizzle**: Again, this is perhaps the best compliment a Labyfic writer can get. No sign of dem pants and people still enjoy it? Excellent!

**Zephrbabe**: Yeaaaah, that may be at issue later.


	6. Temperance

**Chapter Six: Temperance**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Six:**

"No One Is to Blame" —Howard Jones  
"Bring Me to Life" –Evanescence  
"Show Me How to Live"—Audioslave

* * *

Sarah stretched her arms above her head until her shoulders cracked. She'd been click-clacking at the typewriter for hours and could feel it all the way up her sides. She'd felt inspired to write, and although her memory of film-school instruction in screenplays was dim, she found it easy to pick up again. She was barely conscious of the world as she wrote, and Jareth encouraged her in the practice. However, her "r" key seemed to keep sticking, and it had finally become so annoying that she had returned to reality.

What the mechanism needed was oil, and rather than summon it herself, she thought she would find Jareth and make him get it for her. He enjoyed taking things apart and reassembling them; he'd serviced the old Hermes 3000 last time by turning it into and exploded diagram of itself with a flick of his wrist, and assembling it again just as quickly, leaving the dust behind. That was a trick she wanted to see again. And she was lonely for him, which was all the reason she really needed to go find him. It seemed in the week since Toby and Finnvah had left that she had barely seen her own husband at all.

She looked at Yimmil and Sir Didymus, snoozing together against Ambrosius' side by the fireplace. Sarah tiptoed over the shambles of the Scrabble board and their empty cups of mulled wine. She'd leave the entourage behind. Jareth was likely in the throne room, though he might also be in the library or on the battlements or in his private rooms. There was no telling exactly, but the Castle would be helpful and direct her to the right path eventually. And if not, it would be a fun adventure—at least until Egg's weight on her kidneys made her need a bathroom. There were thousands of rooms in the castle, Jareth had informed her, but only four bathrooms. Lately, this was becoming a problem.

She grabbed a thick blue shawl off the nearest chair as she snuck out, shoes barely bending on the stone floor. It was cold in the Castle, though her rooms were always cozy and warm. The cheery fire never seemed to need tending; it burnt down to coals by bedtime, and flickering back to life again by the time she woke. But she slept better and warmer if Jareth slept beside her, and last night he hadn't been in the mood. He had been brooding and surly, and she had told him to go for a flight and shake off his temper. And he had obeyed—transforming at the third running step, happy as a prisoner set free. She opened the window for him, and had the pleasure of watching the flicker of his white wings in the moonlight as he did midair dives and barrel rolls and triple-Salchows for her amusement—or whatever the owl equivalent of these maneuvers were—but then he had flown out of sight and not returned at all until late in the morning.

Whatever particular problem was eating him, he hadn't wanted to talk about it. He'd helped her dress in silence in the morning, condescended to take a few morsels of food from her hands, and had disappeared again shortly afterward.

_There will be some changes after you arrive, Egg_, Sarah thought, resting her hands on her belly. _For one, I won't have a shelf to put my tea-mug on. For another, your father will need to unburden himself to me more than he does. _Sarah had asked to take a hand in some of the logistics of getting the Goblin City through the winter, but Jareth sidestepped her requests. He wanted her buttoned up in her dresses and bolted into her velvet box. It had been nice, back when she was uninformed about the situation, never being obliged to worry about anything more important than how to use her last three letters on a triple word score, but lately it had become boring and frustrating. Hence the writing, and hence her occasional desire to play truant from her non-routine. Like now. _Sneaky, sneaky Sarah, having an adventure!  
_  
She moved silently through the Castle. She could hear the business of goblins and other guests and other latecome residents to this sanctuary, but didn't hear Jareth's voice among them. Windows which had previously been crude holes open to the air had been glassed over, but there were still drafts. She followed the strongest of these on a whim and discovered the great chained doors of the Castle were wide open, with a goblin army's worth of slush tracked down the entrance hall. Sarah grumbled to herself as she pushed the doors closed and wondered just exactly who had come to visit or stay. _He'll be in the throne room with whoever-it-is,_ Sarah thought. _Renewing vows of fealty or receiving instructions on where to go. That's where I'll find Jareth_.

The trail of snow and water indeed led to the throne room, and Sarah congratulated herself on her brilliant deductive powers. She could hear what was going on before she could see inside, which wasn't unusual. Goblins had a gift for noisy mayhem and Jareth had a tendency to enable them. What _was_ unusual were the sounds of the conversation coming from Jareth's frathouse court. She could hear two distinctive voices. One, Jareth's, superior and cruel. Another, a woman's, afraid. The snickering background chorus of the goblins in residence had a sinister and unkind tone. Jareth was bullying someone. The goblins were teasing her. And whoever she was, she was upset and afraid and trying to hide it.

_Well, this seems familiar_, Sarah thought, as she crept up to the lip of the throne room's doorway, shamelessly eavesdropping. Jareth's mocking drawl set her teeth on edge. She felt fourteen again, with the full force of the Goblin King's contempt bearing down on her. _"Sarah, go back to your room. Play with your toys and your costumes." _She wondered who was getting the performance this time, and strained to make out his words over the sounds of Jareth's goblin amen-corner.

"When you were a child, you had your mothers to teach you better manners. But I seem to remember that even then they had to force you to bow your head to me. You seem not to have learned anything."

"I've learned _plenty_, Goblin King." It _was_ a woman's voice, strong and spitfire.

"So you're ready to swear your fealty to me, is that it? Is that why you're here, little one?"

"I was sent here to see Queen Sarah," the woman said. "I was _invited_."

"Oh, were you?" Jareth sneered. "Not by me." The goblins tittered with cruel good humor.

Deciding that Jareth's dubious qualities of mercy were most definitely strained, Sarah peeked her head around the corner.

The whitewashed clockwork giant, Humongous, was holding a woman up by the scruff of her coat the way a person would hold a naughty kitten. Nobody saw her; all eyes were fixed on this ludicrous pageant. Jareth, dressed in dark blue wool with a crimson silk redingote, seemed to be relishing his inhospitality. The woman, in frumpy coat and thick boots and a series of long mufflers wound around her head, was kicking out at the goblins who crowded around her. Many more goblins and chickens and pigs and bats peeked out from the draperies of the new double throne, or from the murder-holes and passageways and the pit. Snowflakes and afternoon light filtered in from the wide open oculi, gentling no impressions.

"I invited her," Sarah said, stepping forward into the dank room. She rapped on Humongous's side. "Put her down," Sarah said, shouting up at the driver.

"My lady wife. Glorious! What, no attendants?" He sprang up from his nearly prone position on the throne. He was wearing black gloves and had his silver-tipped riding crop with him. He was definitely having a bad day if he was mixing blues with blacks.

"HUuUuu-mOnNN!" the driver rumbled, disagreeing with her orders.

"I don't care if she's a... fraggin' aardvark. Put her down! Now!"

"Put her down, but don't let her go," Jareth informed the driver, holding out his hand for Sarah, who joined him reluctantly at the foot of the dais. "If you invited her, you can tell me her name. Can't you then?" He tapped the butt of his crop under her chin, forcing her to meet his eyes.

Sarah scowled at him, hating his condescending tone_. How far are you going to push this, Jareth? _She knocked his crop aside.

Jareth ignored this warning. "No? Don't know who she is? Well, she _is_ in disguise. Let's strip off all this glamour and see if you recognize her then." He summoned a crystal and threw it at the woman. It burst against her chest in a shower of glitter. "Eh? Eh, Sarah?"

The woman, whoever she was, shielded herself from the abrasive glitter. She had seemed oldish and fattish, though it had been hard to tell under all those clothes and scarves and hat, but after Jareth had scoured her, she was young and tall, with dark cinnamon skin paled by weak winter light. Her smooth brow was interrupted by a strange vertical scar. Sarah tried to place her ethnicity. West Indes, Spanish Harlem, or perhaps India. Sarah hadn't realized until now how lonely she'd been for women's faces, human faces. This stranger almost had one, but for her pointy ears and firefly-green eyes. She instantly reminded Sarah of Finnvah, and that was a warming thing. Sarah smiled tentatively at her. _I hope she really is what she seems_, she thought. _I hope… maybe she'll stay_.

"I apologize for my husband's behavior," Sarah said to her. The goblins paused in their teasing.

"I'm used to it," she shrugged.

"Jareth, I did invite her. By proxy."

"Well then, she can give the name of the proxy and tell me why she was invited, or I can summarily Bog her," he said with cheerful malice. He wrapped his hands around her, protective and possessive. "Well?" he snapped at the bundle of coat and scarf and hat and carpetbag who shed glitter under Humongous's restraining hand.

"I was sent by Vercingetorix, Red Branch," she said proudly. "My name is—" she looked at Jareth and averted her eyes. "My name is Zoe."

"Is it?" Jareth said dangerously.

"Shiprah," their visitor said, meeting his eyes. "Called Zoe now. From House Crocus. But you _knew_ that, Elder. I'm the midwife."

"Midwife?" Jareth seemed taken aback. "Midwife?" He looked down at Sarah. "What do you need a midwife for? I've read all six books!"

"You read six copies of What to Expect When You're Expecting, Jareth."

"Well? So? I wanted to see if the endings were different."

"You really do need my services," Zoe said with disdain. Zoe kept her shoulders back, wearing the weight of Humongous's grip like a privilege. Sarah admired her gumption.

"What I need from _you_, young _Zoe_, is—" But before Jareth could get fully wound up again, he was interrupted.

"My lady? My lady!" Sir Didymus yapped, jogging into the throne room. Sarah was so glad to see him that she could have kissed him. His timing was perfect. "I woke from a most shameful sleep and found thou hadst absconded!"

"Oh, good," Jareth shouted, brandishing his crop. "Everyone's here now! Form a line that I might beat myriad asses withal, beginning with your eloquent but irresponsible guard. Verily! Forsooth!"

Mocking and threatening Sir Didymus taxed Sarah to near the utmost limit of her patience. But Jareth was determined to dig for every red cent. "Or maybe I'll begin with you, Sarah. Did you send _my_ Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix to bring _her_ into my kingdom, and without even asking _me_? What's next? Salt pie? Nailgun massage?"

Sarah snatched the crop out of his hand and escaped his arms while he was distracted in trying to snatch it back. "Sir Didymus, please escort Zoe to my rooms." She kicked Humongous. "_You_ can go back to your post and don't forget to close the door behind you next time. You're letting all the heat out. As for the rest of you—" she cast an evil eye over the goblin horde, "Grab your livestock and _scatter_. The King and I are about to have words."

Everyone looked at her. Nobody stirred.

"Move it!" Sarah said with drill-sergeant snap. "Now!" Gratifyingly, everyone did, sober and fearful.

And then she was alone with Jareth, who looked truculent and completely undaunted. "Well?" he asked in haughty tones, nose in the air, hands on his hips. "Explain yourself. Bringing outsiders into my home? Giving _me_ commands in front of _my_ subjects? It defies reason, but I'm sure you'll justify yourself somehow."

She remembered what her father had always done when she was in a snit. He would let her rant and rage and then explain the situation to her after she'd calmed down. This was generally effective, and she always did the same thing for Jareth…

…which was why she was surprised to find herself swinging his riding crop against the arm of the throne and then breaking it over her knee, leather plaits unravelling, shouting incoherently the entire time, lacking all good sense and ready to tear out his hair by the roots.

"Are you finished?" Jareth asked her with towering superiority.

"No! Bring me more of your shit to break!" Sarah screeched.

He whipped off his surcoat and bowed as he presented it to her in a parody of chivalry. Sarah took it between her hands and tried to rip it. No use. The fabric was thin but well-sewn. But Jareth kept his bow, mocking her in every line of his body, and she took her teeth to a seam until it split, and ripped it in two pieces. She stamped on the ruin for good measure, seething at him. "More!" Sarah shouted.

Arching an eyebrow, he leaned over and picked up one of the earthenware jugs of goblin grog. Sarah hefted it and threw it against the wall. It crashed in a thousand dripping pieces, which was very satisfying. By the time they were joined by the smithereens of a plate and a cup, he was sneaking an amused smile. He picked up the last of the tableware in reach and smashed it for her.

"Do you feel better now?" he asked.

"I'm still mad at you!" she wrung her fists. "Those aren't your subjects. They're mine too! This is my kingdom too!" Unable to restrain herself, she gave him the lowest blow she could manage. "You made sure of _that_, didn't you?" He had changed her in preparation to turn the kingdom over to her, to bequeath it at his death. Jareth winced; the blow had struck hard. "How dare you disrespect _me_ in front of them! And how dare you treat the midwife like that! I wouldn't be surprised at all if she decided to leave me here _alone_. And with no help but you!" She burst into loud and ugly sobs.

"Sarah…" Jareth said, uncomfortable. He tried to embrace her but she put up a fight. "Please," he said, now sounding slightly desolate. "Please?" Still angry, she let him pet her, nestling her in, warming her ears and her fingers. "How was I to know you'd sent for her, Sarah? Her? How was I to know she wasn't an assassin or a spy sent to hurt you or me or our baby? You didn't tell me!" He gathered up as much of her as he could, running a thick coil of her hair over and over his hand.

"She's one of the new people, isn't she?" Sarah snuffled resentfully. "A fae and human mix, like Finnvah."

"Another reason not to welcome her with open arms. She's made no oaths of fealty to me. She's dangerous."

"But maybe she has a clue, Jareth! This baby… it's not going to be quite human, is it? It'll be more like… Zoe, or Finn, than like you or me." She pressed Egg against him. "Finnvah picked her, Jareth. He wouldn't have picked just anyone for me. For us."

He tried to work up a scowl, but it failed. "You're right. Finnvarrah isn't careless with you. But you could have asked." He sighed. "Haven't I tried to give you everything you want? You could have asked."

"You're right," Sarah said, rubbing her cheek against the laces of his shirt and the hard skin-warm smoothness of his amulet. "I should have asked you for help, but I was afraid. I'm sorry."

"Foolish girl," he said fondly, and kissed her gently.

"The right words here are 'I'm sorry too, Sarah,'" she replied with a little heat.

"I'm sorry too, Sarah. What am I sorry for?" He tugged her hair gently.

"For not talking to me. I need to know what's going on. I don't have it in me to blindly obey you. You have to talk to me. You have to explain things to me. You can't keep me in the dark." She pinched his ear. "I'm your helpmeet, Jareth. I'm your partner. I'm the Queen."

"Things would be much simpler if your wedding vows had included 'to obey,' he mused. He closed his eyes as her grip on his lobe became a gentle caress. He moved away after a moment and offered her his arm. "Come with me, then, Queen Sarah. You've commanded me to share. I have something to show you." 

* * *

"Holy shit," Sarah said, disgusted and surprised. "What the hell is that?"

"It's a message," Jareth said, also disgusted.

Sarah reached out to touch it, and Jareth pulled her hand back. "Don't," he said.

He had brought her to his private rooms, the ones with the trompe l'oeil landscapes that seemed to move, the room Sarah never entered without his express permission. She hadn't seen the interior of this private space in weeks. Before, it had been a dream of Summer. Now Winter had come even into Jareth's personal retreat. The trees were bare, the blanket of summer wisteria over the gray velvet couch had become a bank of snow-white fur, and the crescent-moon lampstand was coated with silver icicles. Only the waterfall pond seemed unchanged, wafting steam over everything. Jareth had opened one of the little doors hidden in the landscape of the paintings and brought out a burlap bag. Carefully, not touching the contents, he had drawn the bag open over this message, this art, this thing.

It was a narrow cylinder of ice, about a foot tall, tinged red. A barbie-doll was trapped in the center, floating upside-down in an eternal swan-dive, arms raised above her head, brown hair obscuring her face. Her tiny plastic arms and legs jutted out into stumps at the head and the foot of the column. No hands, no feet. And blood. The red… that was blood.

"Is that supposed to be me?" Sarah asked, shocked. _Of course it's me. Of course. This is what the King of Winter intends to do to me._ "Where did you find it?" Sarah asked. She shrank into Jareth's arms, horrified and disgusted, and wishing with just a tiny bit of her heart that she'd left well enough alone, left all this for Jareth to manage. _Too late now_. He held on to her tightly.

"I found it two days ago, out in the perimeter. On the very border. In the broken passage. You know where."

_Yes. The place where we took our last chance_, Sarah thought. "Did you find it by itself, or was there more to it?"

He paused. "Jareth," Sarah warned.

"It was surrounded by a circle of thirteen fairies. Toby and I obviously didn't manage to collect all of them. Dead ones, decapitated, stuck in the snow like little candles. Their hands and feet had been cut off. There were more bodies. Perhaps twenty or so. they'd been… mutilated. Deformed by magic. I can't quite describe it. They weren't part of the … message."

"So John Company thinks he can threaten you by threatening me."

"And brutalizing my subjects." Jareth's voice was bitter.

Sarah cuddled him into her breast. "No wonder you've been so het up."

"I am not 'het up,'" he replied with wounded dignity. "I'm… tired. Everyone needs something from me, everything is _difficult_." He butted his face against her shoulder with this last word, and she patted his back sympathetically. "I thought, maybe if I can keep you from knowing how hard things are, it would be easier. It was like having part of myself kept innocent."

"Silly owl," she said, touched by the sentiment of his motives, even if it had been stupid. "I knew anyway. Well, I knew _something_ was bothering you." She looked at the threat embedded in ice. She tilted his face up from her shoulder and smiled at him. "Buck up. It's a nasty message, but he's revealed at least three things he didn't intend to, the spiteful thing."

"Oh?"

Sarah smiled grimly. She was good at puzzles. She was the best. "One, he can't get inside the Labyrinth himself, or he would have left this directly on our doorstep, not outside. The borders are holding for now, but they need watching, particularly at the gates."

"What do you think I've been doing?" Jareth complained, but Sarah shushed him with a finger over his lips.

"Two," Sarah said, looking at the ice sculpture closely. "The King of Winter doesn't know about the baby. Otherwise he would have made an allusion to it. The doll's abdomen cut out, blood on the thighs, something. Something specific to frighten and threaten us with. He doesn't know."

Jareth's brow smoothed out. "You don't think so?"

"No. The only people who know about the baby are my family and the Labyrinth's residents. Maybe not even all of those. Maybe they think I'm just fat," Sarah said, patting Egg. "Most of the goblins and the ones living now in the Castle know I'm pregnant, but none of them have gone telling tales. That's the third thing."

"Hm?"

"We can know for almost certain that he doesn't have any spies or agents inside the Labyrinth. If there were, he would know, and since he doesn't... you know your kingdom is loyal to you. Or at least the ones close enough to us to know anything worth telling about us." 

"Unless young Shiprah is a spy or an agent." He kissed her fingers and then nipped them. "House Crocus worships me as a god, but young Shiprah always had a rebellious streak."

"Yes, well I understand now why you were so nasty to her, even if I don't excuse it." She avoided looking at the message any more, and felt a surge of confidence and well-being. "Imagine all the other things that the King of Winter doesn't know? They'd fill a book."

"I suppose now you want to go interview our newest resident?" he asked.

"Gold star for you, Goblin King," Sarah said. She kissed the tip of his chin. "Let's find out if she's the right one for the job." 

* * *

"How many babies have you delivered?" Jareth asked, circling around Zoe, sharklike.

"Ten, personally. Two human, eight from the Free People. I've assisted with seven other births. All alive-o and healthy, Elder. My luck is always good there."

"You will address me as 'Majesty,' not by any vague titles, young Shiprah." Jareth unclasped and unceremoniously upturned her bag. A few changes of clothing and personal items fell out. Jareth shook the bag suspiciously, and then there was a practical avalanche of items that made a formidable pile on the bed. Zoe made a noise of outrage and started forward to retrieve her possessions, but Jareth's vicious glance and Sir Didymus's staff kept her back.

"Goodness," Sarah said. "It's like Mary Poppins."

"_Verdad_, that's where I got the idea," Zoe muttered. She looked embarrassed and angry as Jareth stirred through the pile, picking things up and tossing them aside, Yimmil helping, thinking it was a game. "You're making a mess of my things," she complained.

"Yes," he said mildly. He reached for a wooden box and opened it. There was a selection of scalpels, forceps, and other wicked-looking obstetrical devices, all of which reminded Sarah of why she desperately needed someone with Zoe's talents.

"You won't need these until the birth," he said in a tone that brooked no argument, handing the box to Yimmil, who bore it off. Next he took up a small black case and opened it carefully. "Explain the purpose of this," he said, drawing out a wicked-looking syringe.

"It's for injections," Zoe said, nonplussed.

"I know it's for injections! What on Earth or Under were you planning on injecting my wife with?" He brandished the syringe like a weapon. He looked unstable and furious. Standing in her place Sarah would have been daunted, but Zoe was pert to answer.

"Vitamins, if she needs them. Antibiotics, if I need to give an episiotomy. Anesthetic, if she needs help with the pain." Jareth inspected several ampoules tethered in a neat elastic row and nodded, and put the syringe back, though he hesitated, as if he'd like to stab someone with it first.

He focused his intense eyes on the midwife and kept the case under his arm. "You'll get these back once you've injected yourself with each of these substances in my presence. Except the morphia and your chirurugeon's knives. I'll keep _those_ until they're needed. They can kill." He looked at the rest of the pile with disdain. "Nothing else here is particularly suspicious or dangerous. You must have been confident of a warm reception, bringing all this clutter with you. You always were arrogant."

"Don't flirt," Sarah said with severity.

"I wasn't flirting!" Jareth said.

"Yelling at her. For you that counts as flirting."

"She has it coming," he said grimly. He picked up a small folding picture frame and opened it.

"That's mine," Zoe snapped, and this time she ignored Sir Didymus and went to her things. She snatched the picture out of Jareth's hands and glared at him. "Don't touch that! It's mine!" She cradled the photos to her chest and stuffed her belongings back into her bag one-handed. "It's all I have," she said, more quietly. She kissed the photos before laying it carefully on top, and snapped the bag closed.

"No, no, young Shiprah," Jareth said cheerfully. "You have work now. Aren't you _lucky_?" Zoe winced.

"So she passes?" Sarah asked.

"Barely," Jareth said with disdain. "You may take her to your service if it pleases you. Daughter of House Crocus, on your knees."

"No," she said, evading his eyes. "I have a few questions for Queen Sarah first."

"Make them snappy," Jareth said. "You're getting on my last nerve."

Sarah looked at Zoe. _If I were in her position, and had anywhere else to go, I'd have been gone half-an-hour ago. She's afraid of him. Angry with him, but also afraid of him. I wonder… does she have anywhere else to go? _"Ask away," Sarah said.

"It's really his baby?" Zoe asked, looking only at Sarah. "Of his body? You're carrying a fae child? Truly?"

Sarah had the impulse to laugh, but Zoe seemed so earnestly apprehensive. "Yes, yes, yes, and yes," she replied.

"The _Hidalgos_ don't breed with mortal men and women."

"This one has," Sarah said simply.

Zoe looked at her a moment longer, huge green eyes made larger from speculative staring. She opened her mouth as if to contradict again, took in the severe look Sarah gave her, and closed it. "I'll make a vow to _you_, then, Queen Sarah. Take me into your household, for as long as seems right to you."

Sarah looked over at Jareth. "Can I?" she asked.

Jareth tapped his finger against his nose, considering. "This won't be like receiving the oaths you had from Sir Didymus or that giant walking carpet, or even what it might have been from Higgle—"

"—Hoggle"

"Huggermugger. Or even like any promises of help and aid that young Finnvarrah might have given. They love you. Young Shiprah does not. See her there, ready to let fly at me with a sharp word or a ready weapon? How she despises me." Jareth came up behind her and touched her cheek with his, voice warm and seductive. "See her eyes? Even now, she's holding back her anger, and she's doing it because you fascinate her. Our baby fascinates her. She's dangerous. But she can be yours, Sarah, if you so wish. All you need do is pick up her strength and take it for your own."

Sarah trembled, feeling daunted yet somehow magnificent. _It's the edge of fae magic, cutting into me_, she realized. She was never sure, later, whether Jareth had spoken his next words aloud or if he had whispered them directly into her mind.

_Take her and claim her. Listen to the power singing in you. Do what no human being could do, and claim power over your subject. _

She felt the strength of his arousal pressing hard into her buttocks, and his hands around her waist became a caress. "Bend your neck and let her take your amulet in her hands," Jareth instructed. Sir Didymus got down on one knee and doffed his cap.

_My amulet? … my key_. Sarah loomed over the kneeling Zoe, and realized how vulnerable this position made her, and was once again grateful for Jareth's steadying arms around her. _She could snap that key from around my neck and take it. If she took it, she would hurt me. It's not just trust from her. It's trust on my part, too_. She shivered as Jareth directed Zoe to clasp her hands upon the key around her neck, in an attitude of prayer. She sandwiched Zoe's hands and wrists between hers, remembering the feeling of holding Sir Didymus's prickly paws in her hands in just this way when he had offered his oath. But Jareth was right, this was different.

"Repeat after me," he murmured, low, in her ear. Sarah shuddered and said the words.

"Vassal, do you swear to be my good and trusty help, serving me and none other, making my friends your friends and your enemies my enemies, and being always comfortable to my will and pleasure…"

Sarah gasped repeated the words, eyes never leaving Zoe's. She felt the transmission of power, verdict, _mundeburdium_, like a flowing essence from her hands to Zoe's body. She could feel the midwife's strength and life, sweet and juicy as peaches, a force she could suck out easily as a Capri-Sun pouch. She could feel Jareth, too, as if he were under her skin, his palm pressed to the back of her head, pouring a flood of his own power into and through her. She felt like a conduit for a vast golden current, godlike, and she knew that if Zoe ever broke her vow, Sarah had the power to know it, and the power to punish her severely, even to kill her_. Addictive, _she thought. _Inhuman_.

In the thunderhead of this power, Sarah remembered that she was human. She'd resisted the lure of fae magic before, had edited back the strange scrawls it wrote over her soul. Zoe wore a quiet wince, and there was a tightness around her eyes that betokened despair. In pity, Sarah added seven extra words to her oath of fealty, ones that would have enormous repercussions in the future.

"…Until seven months and seven days pass."

She felt Jareth's arms tighten around her in surprise, and probably dismay. Zoe herself seemed to take heart, and repeated the words quickly, finishing with, "I swear to all these things for all that time," as if she were afraid Sarah or Jareth might try to make the duration more indefinite. And then, unbidden, and with a gratitude that threatened to bring tears to Sarah's eyes, Zoe released the key and put a devout kiss on each of Sarah's hands before standing again.

"Hmph," Jareth said. "I suppose that will have to satisfy."

Sarah felt suddenly dizzy. Both Jareth and Zoe reached out simultaneously to catch her before she could topple over. Room spinning, she saw their eyes meet, some sort of initial truce negotiated over her body. 

* * *

Jareth had suggested—demanded—that the midwife give Sarah a thorough checkup in his presence, but Sarah had put him off. She was too tired after the vow to even consider it, begging for a nap instead while Sir Didymus was sent off to make arrangements for her new vassal's livery and quarters. Zoe had, surprisingly, offered Jareth an olive branch in the form of a short wooden tube with a flared lip. "A Pinard horn. Maybe you'd like to hear the baby's heartbeat?" And she had Sarah lay down in her bed and shimmied her clothing out of the way, pressed the fetal stethoscope hard against Egg first in one direction and then another. She looked up at Sarah and gave that delighted and surprised smile again, the one that reached her lips, showed her pretty white teeth. "There it is," she had said, beckoning Jareth over.

"So loud," he said in wonder, on his knees before her. He looked up at Sarah in worshipful delight. "So strong!" And Zoe had carefully retreated into the background as he stroked her skin and kissed her before turning his ear back to the instrument again. "Can you hear it, Sarah?"

She had shook her head. He pressed her hand under his, holding the horn in place, and turned into an owl, brought his owl's ears to the instrument, strutted across her belly twice in possessive triumph, and then turned his head to the lip of the horn again, and chirped and warbled in a quick oceanic rhythm. _That's what he hears_, Sarah had thought with wonder, scratching her free hand through his powder-soft feathers. _That's Egg. _Her soul leapt with utter delight.

That night, Jareth slept warm and safe beside her. They'd made delirious and perhaps inappropriate love together, but the tides of desire were too strong to be stopped by considerations of her rather large belly. She dreamed she was hip deep in that tide, that it was pulling at her thighs and at Egg. She dreamed it was ripping Egg slowly away from her, like a scab, like a tooth.

She woke with a start. Pain. She felt a pain gnawing slowly at Egg. The pain _was_ Egg. In terror she reached between her legs and felt her fingers come away wet, saw them smear darkness against her nightgown.

"Jareth!" Sarah said with a surge of panic. "Jareth, get the midwife. I'm bleeding!"

* * *

**Next… Chapter 7: "Strength"**

* * *

Thanks to FrancesOsgood, acting midwife for this story and beta extraordinaire.

**Fanny**: You're in for a treat next chapter, then.

**Panda**: Finnvah loves Sarah intensely, yes. Maybe even more than he loves Jareth. This will cause complications. I feel like this shout-out should be as long as your delicious reviews, but it's not. Instead, I'll tell you that the moment with the little owl proudly strutting across Sarah's baby-bump is totally for you.

**Askeebe**: It's tricky to write an adult and sexualized and fully-formed adult character who appears in the film as a baby. Trying to avoid as much squick as possible; this Toby isn't a baby any more.

**Jetredgirl**: I know you like the Sareth action. I hope this chapter was good for you.

**Zayide**: Finnvah loves Sarah for her own sake. His relationship to Jareth is neither wholesome nor simple. But wholesome and simple are overrated, at least in my opinion.

**Jalen**: I'm loving your Labydrabbles! I don't know if I made any references to anything in this chapter, but if you see one, point it out? It was pretty exhausting to write.

**Whydancer**: Jareth is a special case because of his tempering/tampering with humanity. He's also the King of the Labyrinth. He could have probably gone the goo route, but it would have left a terrible wound in the Labyrinth. His idea was to get his replacement, his heir, to do him in and take his place. These are great questions, but I like to leave some of this stuff purposefully ambiguous and try to answer to it in the story (because I'm trying to figure these things out myself, too).

**brylcreem queen**: Miss them no more! This chapter is all Sarah and Jareth all the way… but maybe upsetting.

**comical freaka**: HOLY CRAP LADY! The Troll Market is an absolute and direct inspiration for the Goblin Market in this setting—I watched that scene about three times to get the right 'feel' for it. *high five*

**irgroomer**: If my best-laid plans go aright, he'll get his boo-boo (and other parts) kissed next chapter.

**Kat**: Thank you! So glad you're enjoying it!


	7. Strength

**Chapter Seven: Strength**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 7:**

"There Is a Light That Never Goes Out"—The Smiths  
"The Stars (Are Out Tonight)"—David Bowie  
"Tall Cool One"—Robert Plant

* * *

Bee thought back later that actually taking on the fae had been far easier than the aftermath, escorting a one hundred and eighty-some-odd pound six-foot tall horned man through the irritatingly public streets of New York. "Take a left down that alley," Finn said, still limping. His weight was lighter across Bee's shoulders now, but if Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix—sworn brother of the Red Branch, slayer of monsters and defender of the right—wanted to keep his arm around Bee's shoulders, Bee wasn't about to argue.

Bee had been afraid that the patrons of the fae woman's nightclub, the outer ring of her minions, would try to stop them from leaving. A few stopped and stared as he half-carried the weak and bleeding Finn out, like sleepers waking up, but that was all. It was just as well; Bee couldn't muster any strength to put up a glamour, and Finn had seemed almost totally spent.

"Is there anything following us?" Bee asked, once they were out in the street.

"Not yet," Finn said ominously, "But they'll know soon enough." He leaned against a wall and pressed his fingers in circles around his upper thigh and hip. Bee saw blood there.

"Wait here," Bee told him. "I'll get our stuff."

Finn had only nodded.

Bee had been certain that, given how much good luck they'd had to defeat the fae woman, that balancing bad luck would mean he'd find the cache raided or the sanitation truck come and gone with all their worldly goods. It hadn't, and he had been afraid during the jog back that he'd return to find Finn stolen by avenging pursuers. But when he returned, Finn was still there. He'd staunched his wounds with wads of newspaper, which hardly looked hygienic, and he crackled like a cat-toy as he took his red coat and swung it on with none of his customary flair.

"Is it very bad?" Bee asked. "You're pale."

"It's not the blood, it's the pain," Finn said, "Adrenaline's wearing off." He closed his mouth before he could reveal more.

It was snowing again, or raining—the heat coming off the city melted some of the snow into sullen and dirty water that tapped on Bee's head like a reminder of bad fortune. The icy-cold pinpricks of the snow and rain seemed to revive Finn a bit, kept him responsive. His face was a cheerful white mask as he limped alongside Bee. Everything seemed to be going fine until Finn gave a gasp of pain and slammed himself against the filthy wall of the alley to keep from falling down.

"Finn," Bee said, and tapped his cheek. "Finn!" He slapped him, hard, trying to get a response. "Don't you go weak-sister on me now!" There didn't seem to be any new blood seeping from the rough dressing. Bee felt his own balls ache in sympathetic pain as he remembered how Onoskelis had twisted Finn's genitals, but there was nothing to be done about that right now, either. Had she done other things to hurt Finn while Bee huddled like a baby under Finn's coat in the park? Things that couldn't be seen?

"I'm okay," Finn gasped quietly, and inchwormed his way upright. Bee decided privately that he would never, ever, ever go into any situation remotely like the fae's lair ever again without three good exit strategies and three mediocre ones.

"You're not okay!" Bee said. "Tell me how to help you."

"Kiss me," Finn murmured, taking Bee's hand and putting it over his heart.

"What, here?" Bee preferred more romantic settings when he imagined—often—kissing Finn.

"It'll help," Finn told him, flexing his fingers over Bee's. "I need some of your strength. I can pull it from you if you'll let me. Keep your eyes open."

Aggrieved and cautious, Bee tilted his head up and pressed his lips chastely to Finn's.

What happened next was strange. He felt Finn's body as a map transmitted through his heartbeat, not needing his eyes to see him entire. He could dimly feel the pain of Finn's injuries, as if for a moment they shared the same body. The kiss was closed, but it felt more intimate than any of the gymnastic fantasies he'd constructed in his own head.

Finn's eyes flashed sunshine brightness as the kiss ended, and Bee felt drained. The small muscles in his thighs jumped with new exhaustion. "What was that?" Bee asked, breathless. He felt… he couldn't describe to himself how he felt.

Finn, on the other hand, looked much better. "It was a little fairy magic. Mine's for healing, but she showed me…. how to heal myself by taking from others." He adjusted the straps of his pack and the balance of his swords, looking much improved. "I can walk now." He ducked his head, not looking Bee in the eyes. "It's not a thing… I don't think it's a good thing to do."

"As long as it helps, I don't care," Bee said, slinging his pack back on and snapping the catches. His knees felt a little wobbly. "But I'm all jellylegs now."

"There's a station ten blocks from here," Finn said. "If we can catch the train, we can ride practically all the way to Red Branch." He put his arm around Bee's shoulders carefully, as if he were afraid of having it violently thrown off.

Finn, no matter what he'd taken from Bee, was still limping and easily winded. Bee himself was not feeling so hot. They were both too tired to even keep up a pretense of camouflage. The people they passed drew in their shoulders and kept their eyes fixed on the middle distance, but Bee knew they'd been noticed. He kept his teeth bared in a vicious smile, hoping they'd mind their own business and not call the cops. Nothing to do about that. The ridiculousness of it, the difficulty of it, the small details of maneuvering themselves through the city were maddeningly and mundanely terrifying.

"When we get to Red Branch," was Finn's only conversation, "Don't tell them you're Sarah's brother. I'm going to have to explain about the Gentrywoman, but if Miss Zoe comes up, just say that the Queen of the Labyrinth wanted her for a servant."

"You act like we can't trust your own people, Finn," Toby said. "Are there enemies there?"

"We can trust most of them, Bee. I don't want them to know about your niece-or-nephew. It could be dangerous for your sister, or His Majesty. And you stay with me, whatever happens. Please."

"I said I would," Bee returned. "I will."

The subway let them out in a crappy station that exited onto a crappy street. Bee realized with irritated disgust that the two of them still had some walking to do. He muttered a steady stream of curses as they made slow progress, the blind leading the lame to the pit they were destined for. They slipped under a chain link fence decorated with blown debris, and into a concrete playground.

_A school?_ Bee wondered, looking up at the derelict cinderblock building, with its reinforced wire-glass windows and faded institutional doors. Entrances and exits were boarded up, and no lights came from the inside. But the building didn't have the casual marks of squatters—tagging or graffiti or splintered-away plywood that would indicate casual occupation. None of the windows were broken out. Only the yellow poking of high grass around the perimeter of the fence indicated any sense of time or change. This place might have been disused five days or fifty years, lifted out of notice or concern, unseen by anyone who wasn't meant to see it.

"Through the red door," Finn said, pointing at a door attached to an outcrop of the big squat building that, by its lack of windows, was probably the gymnasium.

It was unlocked. _Doors to trouble are always unlocked_, Bee thought grimly to himself. _It's the doors _out_ of trouble that are locked._

"I won't let them hurt you," Finn said as they went in.

Bee didn't find this reassuring, considering Finn wasn't in good enough shape to defend him against bunny rabbits. He was even less reassured when the pitch-black darkness in front of them smacked him in the face. Cinderblock wall, unpainted. He felt out with one hand and traced the edge of the square-twisting narrow passage. _Choke point_, he thought, _Rat's maze_. And then, hair on the back of his neck sticking up, _Labyrinth_. His hair felt bottle-brushy, like a cat's tail. It was like the Gentrywoman's lair, a pocket of reality somehow just below the surface of reality, echoing the real but not part of it.

On the inside, the gymnasium it was a vast hall, with broad carved wooden pillars creating crossbeams that arched impossibly high over the open space. Bee could see the kindly light of a fire, and hear the gentle plucked strings of a harp, and wanted nothing more than to go to that hearth and lay his head down in exhaustion and cold. Instead they were stopped by the singing sound of metal drawn from sheath, and a horned shadow blocked their path.

"A stranger here," growled a voice closer to an animal's than a man's.

"I'm no stranger," Finn answered just as fiercely. "I'm Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix of Red Branch. You know me, Beetleham."

"Yes, it's Finnvah. Put away your blade," said another shadow. Silhouetted in the firelight, Bee could see that this second man was taller than the first, handsome in a human way, with pointed ears and incisors. "Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. Well-met. Who's your little friend?" His glinting eyes looked him up and down with interest, and Bee retreated more snugly into the shelter of Finnvah's protective arms.

"I'm Bee."

"Well-met, Bee. I'm Lumarchin of Red Branch, and this gruff one is Beetleham." He gave Bee another evaluating look, one he didn't like, then addressed Finn. "Where'd you pick him up? He's a likely little one."

They were spared trying to lie by a voice calling from near the fire. "Is that Finnvarrah?" The sweet notes of the harp paused, then resumed.

"Father," Finn said, limping forward. Bee followed close beside him, and Lumarchin and Beetleham and other powerful-looking men made way for them. Some were horned and some were strangely jointed, but a remarkable number of them seemed to be human. All of them were wearing the same kind of long red coat that Finn wore, embellished here and there with embroidery or brooches. All of them carried swords or long wicked-looking knives at their belts, even the elderly who looked so old it seemed impossible they might be able to wield their weapons effectively. The ones whose chests or forearms were naked sported tattoos very much like Finn's, blue-black against all kinds of skin colors. They were proud and upright in their tatterdemalion regalia, like knights from some old story, like a homeless Round Table without a King Arthur. Bee saw no women among them.

Two dark shapes waited before the fire. One, tall, with horns that arched back over sheep-curly hair and wide ears, like an effigy to Baphomet. It was this one who thrummed gently at the lyre against his chest. But Finn went to the other one, a frailish-looking white man, broad shoulders of an athlete gone to seed, white feathers in his thin white hair. Finn knelt down beside him, stumbling over his own swords, and laid his head in the old man's lap.

"Sweet boy, you've been hurt." His pale hand palmed Finn's head, protecting him. "What has happened?"

"Father, I think I've started a war," Finn's voice cracked on the last word. "I've killed one of the fae." And then the tension and the pain he'd been holding in broke, and he sobbed against his father's knee. Bee went to him and put his hand on Finn's shoulder, and dared the old man with a glance to try to send him away. But Finn took Bee's hand, even through his tears, and held him close.

"Explain?" asked the taller horned man, when Finn's cries had slowed.

_Holy cow, where to begin_? Bee wondered.

* * *

Finn listened to Bee deliver the narrative, prompting him to begin with the bargain they'd made with Miss Zoe. Bee was clever, Bee was quick, and Bee understood just what Finn wanted him to do. He spoke of the confrontation itself and left the details of its motivations—particularly those that touched on Sarah, and Miss Zoe's profession—carefully vague. It wouldn't fool Father Eleutherios, nor his own-father, but it would keep potentially incendiary side-tracks unexplored among the more ignorant.

It was hard to think clearly. He hurt, he hurt all over. He was so frightened, still. It took all his strength to surrender to the comforts of home. His fathers commanded one red-coated man after another quietly to bring this, fetch that, send so-and-so a message, spell such-and-such with the children so that another-one might be here as they tended him. The brothers gathered nearest unbuckled his sword-belt and peeled him out of his coat. Scores of sword-callused hands removed his clothing bit by bit and eased him down on an unrolled blanket. They probed at his injuries with strong and gentle hands, hissing in sympathy as they drew away the blood-caked newspaper from his hip and thigh. He had to remember that these were the hands of people who loved him, and it helped, it helped a bit to submit to their kindness. He let them relearn him by sympathetic touch. Bee, on the other hand, wasn't willing to receive any familiar handling. He rather aggressively shrugged off the hands that tried to take his pack, or his shoes, or his coat, slapping an arm away with a too-emphatic "No, thank you," when they didn't get the message.

Ah, Bee tickled him. He grinned at the blond boy, then ground his teeth when his own-father Elcuin disinfected his wounds. It stung like fury, and he remembered again how much pain he was in.

"Took my tattoos," Finn interjected, as his father spread ointment over the broken skin and bound him up in strips of clean linen.

"She didn't dig that deep," his frail father had said, stroking Finn's face. "You've lost skin and some pride, that's all." Finn leaned his cheek into Elcuin's hand, feeling like he'd finally found a place of refuge. Strong draughts of beef-broth and whiskey were put into their hands. Bee sniffed his nervously, but Finn drank his down, feeling it put fire in his belly.

"Well, you've done it at last, Finnvah," drawled Blondel squatting near the fire, his ginger beard captured in two wire-bound forks. "We always said one day you'd fuck Red Branch entire. Now you have." There was laughter at this from the two-dozen-odd brothers gathered around them, not all of it kindly meant. Somewhere in the dark, a child had woken from a nightmare, and was being soothed back to sleep by gentle masculine voice. Finn wanted to follow the lullaby into sleep himself, but he couldn't leave things as they stood.

"Did you really kill one of the Gentry?" one of the youths asked. Knobnail, Finn thought, who he remembered best as a ten-year-old child, all knees and cowlick. He must have passed his trials some time in the past seven years, for he was a full brother now, wearing a brother's red coat.

"I did," Finn said, without boasting or lie. "You need their true name and a whole coat stuffed with luck, but it can be done. It was a near thing."

"And temporary," muttered one of the brethren. "They don't stay dead forever. They come back. They always come back, sooner or later."

Finn stood up with a grunt, and placed the speaker. It was Luc. Luc had always disliked him, but Luc was also shit at anything other than talk. "What were you thinking?" Luc demanded, gearing up for what Finn was sure would be a miserable speech. His serpent's scales glittered against his temples and arms. "No one's done anything like this in centuries. Why did you come back here? Your message about the King of Winter's release isn't even a week cold . We've taken in refugees from the Goblin King's domain, and we've recalled the initiates from their trials. We're all gathered in, and the King of Winter will surely be coming for your head when he finds out. What on Earth or Under possessed you to share this misery with your brothers, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix?"

"Peace, Luc," Elcuin said. "Where else should he come but home?"

"Clothes, please?" Finn asked. He was handed fresh drawers from his pack, and he gingerly drew them up over the bandages. Soft calfskin leggings and a loose shirt followed, lent freely and gladly from various brothers, but he didn't feel truly clothed until he buckled his sword-belt back over his hips, where it chafed against his wounds in spite of the dressing. "You're right, Luc, it doesn't look like good planning on my part. But you got my message about the King of Winter. Good to know Jollymaker didn't sit on it, because what I'm about to tell you affects all the Free People." Finn took a breath. "I was asked to kill that Gentrywoman by the last surviving member of House Crocus."

There was silence for a second, and the fire popped and crackled. Then there was a murmur of disbelief and, following on that, the stirrings of voice and bodies that signaled incipient laughter and derision. He didn't blame them; he'd been away for seven years and it would be easier for them to dismiss him as overwrought or insane than to believe him. "Listen!" Finn said, pouring all the force of his personality into the words. "You know the name of Shiprah. I can say it now because she's gone to take shelter in the Labyrinth. She's been using the name Zoe, plying her trade, gathering intel, hoping to make her move. But House Crocus are healers, not fighters. When she asked for my help, I gave it."

Finn stared around the circle. "I didn't come home because I needed refuge. I came here to warn you. I came to warn you that the King of Winter is minded to destroy the houses of the Free People. He's sent servants like that fae to find others like me, bleed the magic out of us, and turn the empty husks into his servants. More, he's murdered Elders of the Free People who stand in his way. And he doesn't scruple to kill humans, either." Bee looked up at him in fearful wonder, and Finn longed to hold him. "The Gentrywoman was happy to admit what she did to House Crocus. More, she boasted that the King of Winter had given her license to do it! House Crocus was first on their list, and I'm sure they intend the same for Red Branch. Ruin and disaster, unless we retreat now. Today."

There was another murmur among the brotherhood, but this time with the sounds of belief and concern. Finn felt a wave of dizziness overtake him, and would have stumbled, except Bee was there by his side. He leaned on him gratefully.

It was Elcuin who took up the thread of the conversation, giving it purpose now that Finn had done his job in giving it direction. "Out of the four children we've sent into the world for their initiation in the past ten years, only one has returned. Traces would have been found if they had met with ordinary deaths. What Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix says provides a definite answer for their disappearances. Winter has taken them."

"Old Moneybags couldn't have taken any of ours without help," someone, probably Sigurd, added.

"They're coming to kill us?"

"How can we fight the King of Winter?"

"Listen, my sons," Father Eleutherios said, in those dark and rumbling tones that beckoned ears to listen. "The King of Winter is the King Over the World." His eyes in the firelight were deep reflective black. This liquid-black gaze flowed through the group, and Finn felt the tension in the room ease. "Yet nowhere is it written that the ram must yield to the hungry wolf when it sets upon him. It was decided, when Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix was brought to us as a child, that we would protect him and his kind, the way the flock protects the lambs, with sharp horns and hard hooves and the strength of our numbers. He has not started this war. He has brought us timely word about our danger, and there is no lie in him. This is what I say."

The room was silent, but for the crackling of the fire in the hearth.

"We'll speak more of this," Elcuin said, rising, and grasping Finn around the shoulders. "But for right now, our Finnvarrah and his companion are worn out from a hard victory, and they need rest." Finn tried to protest, but Elcuin was stubborn, leading him away from the fire with Bee flanking his other side. The brethren patted him in sympathy as they passed by, but Finn dragged his feet. He wanted to help, but he was so tired, and his father so coaxing. "Your old bed is empty and waiting for you. Wouldn't you rather be there? Come now, my beamish boy." He gave Bee a significant look, and Finn allowed himself to be chivvied along to one of a series of curtained alcoves that nestled under the balcony that ran the perimeter of the hall.

"Father?" Finn said, "I'm sorry. I only ever bring you bad news." Tears threatened him again, and he let them flow.

"You're my good news," his father said wryly, wiping his face. He kissed his forehead, and Finn felt better. Elcuin and Bee shared the job of preparing him for bed. His clothing and weapons were folded and stacked neatly on a footlocker at the end of the narrow bed, next to a tiny camp lantern. His father flicked it on as Bee shucked off his own clothes and crawled in beside him. "The potential for war has been brewing for years. Someone had to set the spark. Why not you? Your cause was just." He pulled the dark curtains close, only his white head peeping through like Marley's ghost. "We'll talk and decide what to do. But for me, you are _my_ son, and I am proud of you. Now go to sleep. Things will be better in the morning."

Finn didn't want to sleep. He was determined not to sleep. There was so much to do and say. But Bee turned in the blankets so they were enclosed face-to face, the warmth of their breath and bodies making a cocoon. "Sleep," Bee said, and kissed his lips. "I'll watch over you."

"I love you, Bee," Finn murmured, wishing it wasn't an apology. "I.." and between the space of one breath and another, he passed out.

* * *

Bee woke with a start and checked his watch. He hadn't meant to sleep at all, but he groggily saw that he'd been out for six hours. His bladder was screaming. He pulled on his pants and a t-shirt and slipped through the alcove curtains, finding the bathrooms off the gymnasium-hall by elementary-school instinct. When he emerged, he stared around at the dimness of Red Branch, and realized he was starving.

The old man with feathers in his long white hair was sitting crosslegged at the hearth as he approached it, stirring a cauldron-sized pot of something that smelled delicious. He handed a crude wooden bowl to Toby and ladled up a portion of chewy-looking oatmeal with fruit and meat in it.

"There was honey earlier, but it's gone now," the old man said by way of apology. Bee nodded and ate. He'd gone to sleep with the sounds of Red Branch in his ears—the monkey-house squeals of young children playing, the clash of swords, the sound of… animals? Now things were silent and still. There was no sign that there was anyone else in this vast hall somehow tucked or folded into an abandoned public school gym.

"What's been decided?" Bee asked, handing the bowl back for seconds. "Finn told you there was danger. Why are you still here?"

"Me myself? What did you expect? I wasn't about to abandon my son, _Toby Williams_, any more than your own father would abandon you to a house fire to save his own skin." Toby blanched at the sound of his own name, angry and ashamed and ready to fight. However, his mouth was full, and so were his hands.

"How do you know who I am?" he asked, swallowing. He cast a glance back between the rough choke-point.

"Finnvah told me," the old man said… what was his name? Anduin? Elcuin. "A few months ago, he suggested the idea of taking a squire into the streets. There were plenty of young brothers qualified and deserving, but Finnvah had someone else already in mind. You. He gave me your name then. The brother-in-law of the Goblin King. Well and so, I owe the Goblin King a favor I can never repay, and you brought my son home safe, so I suppose he didn't choose so badly. Care for some coffee? I can make a pot."

"I'd love some," Toby said. "And… I'm sorry I was rude." Elcuin acknowledged his apology with a nod. "Who else knows who I am? Finn said it would be dangerous to say too much," he explained, while the old man dithered with a camping percolator.

"Yes, it would have been dangerous, and you were smart not to declare yourself. But that was last night and this is the morning. Almost all the brethren have left for the new home. Other than me, only perhaps old Eleutherios knows who you really are—the goaty one. He's the son of the Autumn Oracle, so he sometimes sees things others don't. But he won't tattle. Now, I have some questions about what you've been up to, and about the goings-on in the Labyrinth with the King of Winter."

"Ask away," Bee said, gratefully taking a mug of hot dirty coffee from his hands, chewing on the grounds between sips. "But I have questions, too. Like, why are you Finn's father? What's your relationship to the Goblin King? What's the Autumn Oracle, and what does it have to do with Red Branch?"

"You surely flit from thing to thing, little Bee," Elcuin said, in saucy tones so precisely like Finn's that it was like hearing the echo of his voice. "It's a longish story, and I haven't told it in a while, but since you saved my son's life, I suppose I'll answer your questions." He took the dirk from his belt and began to sharpen it in slow singing strokes that cast sparks on the stone hearth.

"I was in the last of my twenties when I met the Goblin King, but of course, that wasn't the name he used. I was the drummer in a band that played the New York circuit, and we were playing a boy bar out in the sticks. He was crying in an alley where I'd gone to poke a smoke. Just crouched down over the pavement like it was a trapdoor that could be peeled up, only he didn't have the strength. Tears like diamonds on his face, fingers like stick-pins. Pretty as a girl he was, all eyes and teeth, and I figured him right away for not human." Elcuin closed his eyes and mused. "So I invited him in for a drink and maybe some food if the tips were good. The other boys didn't mind. We were all allowed to keep pets as long as they pulled their weight. Him, he… I don't know. He pulled his weight. Within a night he wasn't a pet, he was our leader. It was like a spell he cast over us, even though it lasted only a few weeks. He could sing."

The dagger sang her skirling metal glissandi and gave off sparks bright as fireworks.

"And whenever he sang, the money poured out of the audience like rain. He put it in our hands and kept nothing for himself. Pretty soon, we weren't even interested in the money as much as the music we were making. Gorgeous music, perfect music, but it also hurt to make it, like it was blood being drawn. We couldn't stop. We followed him everywhere, and everywhere the shower of bills and coins, and everywhere the pain of feeling something sucked out of you. It's a terrible thing, to be enthralled by one of the fae. You get in danger of losing yourself. But he left us, just before I think we would have died from his genius. I was a bit sad when he left. The sadness lasted. The band didn't." Elcuin tested the edge of his dagger; a bead of red blood glittered against his thumb and nodded at his weapon approvingly.

"When he came back to me, he was different. Crueller, colder, older. He wasn't playing at being human any more. He'd done something strange to his hair, and he was all in black leather, like one of those punks looking for a rough ride. He had a baby with him." His eyes met Toby's, and he seemed at once to be thirty years old and a thousand years old. "He told me I was the last one left of our band, and that the child was my prize. For surviving him. He put that baby in my arms and told me where to find Red Branch. The Labyrinth-king's reputation opened their doors to me, but I think it was the baby that really won them over. Finnvah was a beautiful child, and so clearly marked out for something special."

Bee stared at the fire. In the darkness of Red Branch, the bright crackling fire was red, bright copper at the tips, white-hot and indecisive neon-blue where they sucked on the wood. There were black lizard-creatures crawling on the burning logs, cracked-skin and bright where the cracks were, like seams of hot magma. _Salamanders_, Bee thought. _They're salamanders_.

"I'd been in a bad place, a dark place, before that, but being responsible for a tiny child makes you re-evaluate priorities damn quick. I'm glad I did. Red Branch adopted us, and it made a world of difference for everyone involved. You see, when I came here with my son, Red Branch was dying off. All the houses of the Free People were—that's what they call themselves, the ones with a touch of the magic in their blood, who live here among human beings. They were all growing thin, in numbers and in magic. I remember suggesting to Eleutherios that we could do for the throwaway children of this city what the Goblin King had done for us. That's what we did. Red Branch took all the boys who looked like they might be raised to the blade, and we sent the remnant and all the girls to other houses starving for children. Pretty quickly, it seemed like these cute youngsters were having children of their own, and not a one of them untouched by some manner of magic. In less than two generations, Red Branch was revived. And not just us—there are other houses where the Goblin King delivered stolen children, and those houses also began raising the lost boys and girls. For that, many of the houses of the Free People owe the Goblin King their fealty and favor. But for my part, I remember how he gave me a little child who named me "Father," and for that gift, I'd give my life. And so you see, here I am."

The fire burned but didn't burn out. The largest brand among them was a massive tree-limb, golden-barked and many-branched, with a few leaves licking with fire, but not consumed. A magic fire. "Finn's a lot older than me then," Bee said, half asking.

"That can bother you if you let it, but it doesn't have to," Elcuin said. "He's still very young—practically a newborn in the ways the Gentry would measure time. As for his human nature… he's old enough to bear pain stoically, but it doesn't mean he feels things any less than you do. Be gentle with him, if he loves you."

Bee nodded. _I got Finn into this mess. He wouldn't have gone looking for that fight if I hadn't manipulated him. I've got power over him._ It was a heavy responsibility. "Elcuin... thank you. Everything that's gone wrong… so much of it is my fault. I want to make it up to you… to everyone, if I can."

"At least you speak like a man, even if you look like a child," Elcuin said. "Now tell me more of what's happened to the Labyrinth. Finn's message was full of essentials but thin on detail."

Toby held out his cup for a second pour, deciding how to _tell_ the details. "I guess for me the story starts with a bad wish my sister made, and the goblins coming to take me away." _Yes, everything starts from there_, Bee thought. _Every story about the Labyrinth begins with the choices people make, and the judgment of the Goblin King upon them. _

* * *

In dreams, Finn fought Onoskelis again and again. She offered him everything he had ever wanted. Formless and with form, she filled his senses; the heat of fire, the scent of bitter aloes, an engine of golden automata frogs which croaked rubber-bladder love-songs around a fountain of blood. "Follow, follow," she sang in his ear. "Give me your name," she begged, caressing the tattoos on his shoulder, tracing their characters with one soft and warm fingertip, devastating him with her touch.

She pressed visions under his eyelids, and he became a goblet of golden wine she drank from, and it was a pleasure to be drunk. He became a leopard she hunted, and he died a thousand orgasmic deaths upon her spear. "Come be nothing, be unread, give me your name."

_No, you_, he insisted, also without words. _You go be nothing_. Awkward, like a child just learning to walk, he transformed himself as well. He became the knife in her hand, and he cut her, and drank the golden ichor that flowed from her. She tasted like pain.

"So cunning," she whispered to him, and he was the one being cut. "I'll savor you slowly, and make you last." The pain was so fresh, as sharp and hot and fever-making that it felt just as it had when Jareth had carefully and painfully taken up iron and carved his name in his skin. The blade had been hot, and it had hurt. He'd gone to the Labyrinth with nothing more than the red-covered Triskaideque and solid advice from Elcuin, and had had to kneel down at the Goblin King's feet and promise his life to him before he would do so much as speak one word to him.

_"Tell me about my mother,"_ Finn had asked him. And his answer: _"No."_

His words had hurt, and the blade had hurt, making the tattoo in the old way, with hot blade and ash. He hurt now. _Please stop!_ Finnvah whimpered, pushing Jareth away, pushing Onoskelis away. _You're hurting me!_

Finn opened his eyes and stared out at the curtains separating his sleeping alcove from the others. He blinked slowly, not sure of what time it was. Bee was gone, and his wounds burned under the dressing. His leg felt tight and stretched.

Someone had obviously come in to check on him while he slept, and they had left a pitcher of water and the necessary supplies to change the dressing. He grimly went about this business, cleaning away the blood and fluid cracking through the poultice. His tattoos were still there, but fainter and smoother than they should have been. Onoskelis had exacted payment for what she had taught him about his fae nature, and she had taken payment in flesh. But in return, he had learned how to use his Gift to heal himself. His scars and Bee's own exhaustion were proof enough of that. He was ashamed of his weakness. Given enough time, and no Bee coming to his rescue, she would have had everything from him.

He bandaged up his hip and thigh, covering up the faint trace of the scarified tattoo that the fae woman hadn't dug deep enough to take completely. The mark she had left on him in return went deeper than the skin. It was made of wanting.

He had wanted what she had offered—transformation, a definitive category, an end to being a liminal person even inside a community of liminal people. Even at Red Branch, where he belonged, where the adopted and gathered-in and called members had the blood of the Free People or the human in them, he stood apart. None of the brothers had the hand of the fae as strongly and surely laid on their bodies as Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. None of them had the ability to give him what Jareth had denied him—fae magic, fae power, the things which were his birthright. Onoskelis had. All she had asked in return was everything he was.

Finn sighed and began to dress, hungry for his breakfast and for the sight of his own-father and his brothers and Bee, who loved him.

_Jareth, why didn't you let me be your son?_ No reply was forthcoming, but Finn thought maybe he finally had the courage to ask him in person, the next time they met.

* * *

He found his way to the easements by memory and touch in the dark, noting with unsurprised and grim pleasure that the work of relocation had gotten well underway while he slept. Still, his father was here, and so was Bee. He misliked that. His instincts told him it was now the time to run, run like the deer before the beaters and their dogs, and so he was glad to find Luc waiting for him as he emerged from the stall, serpent's scales glittering in the lantern light.

"Is this going to be a fight?" Finnvah asked him. He slung his baldric off his shoulder and rested it at the ready on the line of sinks.

"Oh, there'll be a fight, brother, but not with me. Not today, at least." Luc held up his hands, open, empty. He was unarmed. Finn allowed himself to relax just a little. "The vanguard has left, the new home claimed. All that remains here is to collect the fire and see to the traitors."

"So we do have traitors," Finn said. "Do we know who they are?"

"All the brotherhood is accounted for, with the exception of Lumarchin and Beetleham, who both left yesterday, shortly after you arrived. One of them or both of them have gone to report to their master. It doesn't matter who it is. They aren't the problem. You are. Father Elcuin has refused to leave without his precious baby boy."

"He knows I can't go with you," Finn said. "I have to get to the Labyrinth and warn the Goblin King. What's he playing at?"

"He has the smell of last stand on him," Luc said, scowling. "Blaze of glory, defending hearth and home, doomed but epic battle, all that."

Finn cussed, not inventively, but explicitly.

"Exactly," Luc said sourly. "You really suck, you know that, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix? Why do you always have to be such a big damn hero? It makes the rest of us look like cowards."

"It just works out that way," Finn said. "I'm sorry it gives you so many opportunities to look like a punk, little brother."

Angrily, Luc took him strongly by the back of the neck. "I never liked you," Luc said. "Dad's favorite, everyone's favorite, so special with your Gentry gifts." He banged their foreheads together. "But you're my brother and I love you. I'll always be on your side. No matter what."

* * *

Finn listened from the shadows as Elcuin delivered Bee a lesson in Red Branch history.

Finn knew this story as well as his own bones—though it was strange to hear it recited in vernacular prose instead of the rolling notes of harp-chant—how some three hundred years ago the Autumn Oracle had willingly laid his life down to the turn of the seasons, inaugurating Winter's reign. How the Autumn Oracle, the Fall King, had negotiated the terms of this sacrifice to protect the Brotherhood of the Red Branch, granting the knights of the order their charter and their independence from all obligations and service save the ones they undertook willingly. The Oracle had told the young King of Winter that no season was eternal, and that he would be cast down in his turn. Finally, the lesson went, there was what the Autumn Oracle had vouchsafed only to the knights of his court—that the Prince of Spring would be succored by Red Branch, be a fosterling of the Labyrinth, fae-touched, born of woman, herald of the new age.

As with every time he heard it, Finn had doubtful feelings about this story. There were times when some Elders of Red Branch looked at him as if he were the fulfillment of prophecy, and times when he had felt pushed to live up to their expectations. _But I'm no Prince of Spring_, Finnvah thought. That was the thing about prophecies—if you had to work all the angles to make them come true, they were more descriptive than predictive.

He crept close to the fire and sat down beside Bee and Elcuin, a red and brown shadow in the red and brown firelight. Bee leaned against him instinctively, gazing up at him in contentment. Finnvah rubbed his cheek against his.

"Feeling better?" he asked Bee. His father handed him a bowl of the last of the morning meal, and he ate quickly and gratefully.

"Much," Bee said. "I like your family. You look better. Are you better?"

"I'd better be," Finn said, staring at his father, who said nothing. "It's time for us to go." He swallowed his last bite. "Go get your things," he told Bee. "I mean we're leaving now."

For once, Bee obeyed him without asking persnickety questions. That was good, because Finn didn't trust himself to face down his father with an audience. "It's time for you to leave, too, Father," he said.

"Are you trying to give me orders?" Elcuin said, shaking back his be-feathered hair. "That would be a mistake. There are traitors in our brotherhood. I intend to collect their coats."

"The only thing you'll collect is a slit throat," Finn said, hating himself, choking on love. "You're what, pushing seventy? Father? The best you'll be able to do is slow them down if they slip in the puddle your blood makes."

His father stood and clasped the hilt of his short-sword. "Would you care to test my mettle, son of mine? I may be old, and the beauty of my youth gone, but I can still swing a sword. Try me and see. Go on, draw your blade. Winner stays."

"You taught me that words cut as close as a blade, and sharp reason beats sharp steel. We're already fighting now. Who will carry the fire to the new house, if not you? Who will teach the young ones their history if you die? And if you're taken, who will stop our enemies from torturing the location of the new house from you? I am going. There's no need for you to protect me, so you are going too. Now put away your sword."

"You shame me," Elcuin said, and his face looked old.

"I don't want to," Finn said. His heart ached. "Tell me you yield, and I can stop." On cue, Luc emerged from the shadows and gently took Elcuin's sword from his hand.

"Father," Luc said. "You will come with me?"

Elcuin had one last surge of strength. "You," he said, grabbing Finn's shoulder. "I leave it to you to uphold the honor of our house. I charge you, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. The traitors' heads must be brought to Red Branch. Their coats must be stripped from their unworthy backs. Don't return to us until this task is done."

* * *

Bee, returning with his pack on his back and Finn's in his arms, bit down on a protest when he heard Finn's father give him his ultimatum. _You horrible old man_, he thought. But Finn only bowed his head in submission, and gave his assent.

He had watched as Finn and the viper-man had lifted the great branch from the hearth between them, balanced on shovel and tongs. It shrank to minuscule size, salamanders and all, still burning as they wrapped it in foil and then in a layer of asbestos blankets, still smoldering. When it was done up like the world's weirdest Christmas present, Elcuin had tucked it into one of the innumerable inner pockets of his red coat and nodded.

All that had been left on the hearth was one red-brown acorn, flaming with light, unconsumed. Its light flickered out, and Bee let out a gasp as the vaulted ceiling and its beams and even the hearth itself vanished from sight, leaving only blowing plastic sheets where the curtains on the alcoves had been, and a hearth made of two cinderblocks. Red Branch was just an abandoned gymnasium, doors bricked up, with a hole in the ceiling letting in the sleet and the cold. Luc and Elcuin had vanished into the shadows, leaving Finn and Bee in possession.

_Remember,_ he thought to himself. _Remember, so that someday you can draw it as it was here.  
_

* * *

"It's fine," Finn told him, as they walked to the subway, glamour powerful as shields embracing them with invisibility.

"Well, I just don't see why we've got to do that on top of everything else," Bee carped, adjusting the straps on his pack. "You shouldn't have to do an epic task just to come back to your own home. That's not fair. Why do you have to pay the price for someone else's bullshit?"

"Well, I guess because we're not aligned with Winter," Finn said philosophically. "Seems to me that that's the King of Winter's whole creed. Let someone else pay for it. Me-me-me-me-me. Want a monument built? Make slaves and let them mortar the stones with their own blood. I get mine, everyone else go fuck themselves. It's a child's way of thinking. So this is how it has to be, since I'm an adult. Red Branch can't allow traitors to the brotherhood to walk away free. I wasn't going to make my father do it, but he's right, someone has to. Why not me?" He smiled, eyes as bright as the day was dark. "That's what adulthood is. Putting yourself aside. That's why our trials for membership include living a year on our own, so we can understand just how far me-me-me will get you. There's a way there, but it must be a cold way, and I don't want it."

"The Goblin King acts like that," Bee said darkly. "Me-me-me. _He_ treats you like a slave. A favored slave, but still a slave."

"Yes, I suppose that's so," Finn replied shortly, surprising him. "I decided this morning that things were going to change. Either he releases me from his service, or I break my oath, but I'm done with the relationship as it is. I've been walking the line for a long time, trying to belong to either the Labyrinth or Red Branch and not really doing my duty to either. Well, I'm choosing family. I'm choosing this world, not the Labyrinth."

"Pretty big talk," Bee said as they walked down into the subway station, wondering if Finn would really actually defy Jareth when it came down to brass tacks, or if he'd bow.

"It'll be a piece of cake," Finn said lightly, and that was when everything went to hell.

In the middle of the crowd, someone grabbed him so suddenly and swiftly that he didn't have time to react. "Just stand where you are," a voice said in his ear, and he felt something hard dig into his side. There was an arm in a red sleeve around his neck, holding him securely. "Call to him or I'll stab you through," his assailant commanded, and Bee watched Finn continue blithely walking, talking to a Toby by his side that he hadn't noticed was no longer there.

Bee stood still and watched Finn walk away, lips sealed. The traitorous brother of the Red Branch cursed him and called out. "Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix! I've got your boy."

And Finn turned.

Time seemed to slow down. The other people in the subway station made an oasis of unconcern, not seeing, not hearing, moving around the perimeter of the glamourous circle like sands flowing around a rock-face in the desert. The pressure on his ribs became a jab, like a spoon stabbing through a blanket, and his captor laughed.

"Let him go, Lumarchin," Finn said, drawing his long steel sword. Bee felt the hard jab in his ribs again, and then the pressure lifted. The traitor's hand held a wicked sharp pigsticker of a knife, but bloodless, but Finn screamed as though he'd seen Toby stabbed through.

_It's the coat_, Bee thought, furious and delighted. _Proof against blades. My coat!_ And before he could second-guess himself, he used Lumarchin's surprise at his not-dead state to drive an elbow backward into his solar plexus, breaking his grip and stealing his breath. Without thinking, he spun drove the rubber-soled toe of his sneaker square into his attacker's crotch.

Lumarchin crumpled at the waist, dagger clattering to the cement, and Bee slammed his knee into his too-tempting face, amazed at himself, amazed that it worked. Cruising high on victory, he kicked the dagger away. It caromed off the shoes of the oblivious bystanders, and dropped over the ledge. He ran to Finn.

"You're alive?" Finn said, grinning all teeth through his fear. He patted Toby's side, unzipped his coat and felt his side all whole. "He stabbed you. Gods under, Toby! I saw him stab you!"

"I'm okay," Toby said, keeping one eye all this time on the fallen man in the red coat. "I'm okay, I'm fine, Finn, go kill him!"

"I will. I will." Hot stale air blew over their faces as the train arrived. "But first, you've got to go. Please get on that train. You've got to get to the Labyrinth. You've got to warn your sister. Please. Go." Finn embraced him fully, and Bee inhaled deeply, marking the smell of him in his memory. There was so much to say still, and there was no time. Arguing and coming to consensus would only make his choice for him. Lumarchin, now bloody-nosed, had risen to his feet and drawn his own sword, steel-blue under the industrial lights.

"Come back to me," Bee said. "Kill him and come back to me, Finn. I love you! I love you!"

He let the crowd take him, pulling him in their oceanic current into the subway-car. He pushed his way between grumbling and unhappy people sitting on the seats so he could look out the window. The last thing he saw of Finn was him parrying Lumarchin's overhand lunge. Then the train was through the tunnel, into the dark.

* * *

Every stop the subway made was like a scream in his ear, demanding he go back to Finn, that he help Finn, that he not abandon him. It took all the willpower he had to stay on the path he had chosen. He transferred at the proper place and waited, an agony of waiting.

The train to the Labyrinth refused to arrive, no matter how hard he wished for it to come. Knowing he'd get on a car going the other way unless he kept moving, Bee eased himself down onto the tracks and began to walk. Somewhere behind him, he heard voices. He ran faster.

_Get to the Labyrinth_, he told himself. _Get to the Labyrinth._

He stopped short, cracking his head against a wall of ice. There was no way through. The route to the Labyrinth had been iced over, iced through. Light reflected off the ice, flashlights in the hands of police officers. One of them spoke into the radio on his shoulder, and the other one shone the light bold in Toby's face as he turned around.

"Hands up!" he barked. "Give your name."

He put his hands up. "I'm unarmed," he said, hating himself for failing so completely. It was over. It was all over now. "My name is Toby Williams. My father is Justice Robert Williams, from the New York Supreme Court."

They came and ripped his backpack off him, and slapped cuffs on his wrists, and told him he was under arrest.

"That's fine," Bee said calmly. "Take me in. I have a phone call to make."

* * *

**Next… Chapter 8: "The Chariot, Reversed."**


	8. The Chariot, Reversed

**Chapter Eight: The Chariot, Reversed**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter Eight:**

"I'm Deranged"—David Bowie  
"Too Late for Goodbyes"—Julian Lennon  
"Somebody That I Used to Know"—Gotye feat. Kimbra

* * *

Jareth stood at the battlements in the predawn light, dressed for the cold. His mouse-colored velvet coat was lined along the sides and tail with a patchwork of bright songbirds' wings, and a thick neck gaiter of soft brown wool protected him from the amulet over his breastbone to the edge of his lower lip.

He stared out into the Labyrinth. Covered with snow, it looked like a wedding cake. A cup of coffee from the metal thermos at his wrist steamed and slicked the stone ledge with a layer of ice from melted snow. His lighter clicked as he lit a cigarette.

_"You'll have to give those up," Sarah had said. "Smoking is not good for you."_

"I don't care if it's good for me," Jareth had returned.

"Secondhand smoke isn't good for babies," Sarah had said, leaving the suggestion open-ended.

He inhaled carefully, letting the smoke roll down his philtrum and between his lips, a circular breath that saturated his mucous membranes with the calming drug, insubstantial, yet steadying. He took another sip of the scalding hot coffee.

"What about you?" he asked the Labyrinth in the dark light of the morning, with the silent snowflakes drifting inexorably down. Not a wedding-cake, or a veil—a burial-shroud. "Are you as mortal as I am now? Do you have the ability to die?"

The sky was so dark, and the Labyrinth, in its gown of white, reflected what little light there was from the inconstant moon. It was beautiful, and cold, and gasping for breath. Every day, it seemed, it bore fewer signs of life.

Young Shiprah had delivered the bad news in certain terms. "I think there was a placental abruption. A very minor one. They're not uncommon in the third trimester."

"I'm only in my second," Sarah had insisted. "Twenty-three weeks."

"Hm. Fetal development suggests you're further along. Which is good, because the survival rates of the fetus don't come to fifty-fifty until week twenty-five." Shiprah had held up her hands together in a plate, thumbs crossed. "This is about the size and thickness of your placenta. It provides the exchange of gasses, nutrients, and antibodies to the fetus." Zoe folded down her pinky and ring fingers. "Judging by the amount you've bled so far, this much has probably detached. I don't know what caused the abruption. It might be toxemia, or the result of some sort of trauma. But I can't be sure."

"What's to be done?" Jareth had asked calmly, turning and turning her wedding ring around her finger, polishing it against her skin. _This gold is hard gold, adulterated gold. Mixed with something more base to give it strength and lasting form. And I am like this ring, myself mixed and forged twiceover. Not pure anymore, but stronger and better for it. This ring is a circle, eternal. As is my love for you._

"The placenta can't be reattached. What we have to do is keep it from tearing away any further, _entiendes_? You mustn't move. At all. I'm advising complete and total bedrest. Unless you're eating a meal or taking a trip to the bathroom, Your Majesty, you should lie here and be still. From this point forward, every week, every day, every _hour_ we can keep that baby growing inside you is a victory." Zoe's frown of professional concentration had broken, and she looked as bewildered and upset as Jareth felt. "If there's no movement by morning…" Zoe's hands had fallen to her sides, helpless.

"What danger will there be to Sarah," Jareth had asked coldly, so coldly that Sarah had looked at him as if he were a stranger to her, "If the baby dies?"

One week ago, at dawn after that terrible night, Sarah had opened her eyes and proclaimed she felt movement from the baby again.

"Jareth," she had said quietly. "I dreamed she was born."

"Yes," he had replied, just as quietly, kissing her forehead and her eyes. "A girl, then."

_Mine. Mine!_ he had thought fiercely, stroking her belly. _I want you_, he told his daughter-to-be. _Mine_.

He remembered Finnvarrah as a baby, carefully nameless. He hadn't wanted to hate Robin's child, but as the days and weeks had gone by, he had begun to see the mother in the boy-child's face, and had disposed of him before the ache of affection could turn to poison. When more fae-touched children had come into the world, squalling for his attention, blaming him for their life, he had quickly gotten rid of them as well. Young Shiprah had been among these.

Prickles of hair caught in the fabric as he drained the last sip of his cup. If it got any colder, he would let nature take her course and give him a chin-pelt. Perhaps Sarah would relinquish the interdiction on facial hair if he quit smoking. He flicked the butt out into space.

Jareth thought about blood, and sacrifice.

He had so little power now, and over a realm he had sacrificed so much of himself to possess. Each inhabitant who had chosen to leave had left another tear in the fabric of his power, and the whole cloth was now tattered, hanging in threads. Each and every one of them had sworn an oath to serve him, and he had promised, in return, to protect them. A nisse's absence here, a troll's there were all a gap in his awareness, a place missing an occupant, a shelf missing a toy, a toy minus a battery. Those that remained… were weak, all their power turned to their own survival.

There was a way around this problem, Jareth knew. And although he couldn't have articulated exactly how or from what source he knew it, he knew that a sacrifice made of blood would have served to patch over his power, maybe even enough to give him back control over his kingdom.

His own child's death would have been an infinite spread of magical wealth and sustenance, but he didn't plan to give her up, not on purpose. He had had pleasure in her making, and she was coming as a gift, one Sarah had given him on their wedding-day. No, he didn't plan to give her up, not even for the sake of the Labyrinth itself.

So. Not from his child, but life-blood was needed. Someone who belonged to him, but to whom he owed no obligations. Someone with fae magic coursing through their veins, someone accessible. Someone, preferably, that he disliked. It hadn't taken him long to decide on the appropriate victim. It was pleasing to know that the universe still ran on congruencies.

His ear twisted as he heard the sounds of snow-muffled footsteps coming toward him, young Shiprah going carefully in her thick boots on icy snow. She came to him, very near, at his left side, and stared out with him for a few minutes, blessedly silent.

"I got your note."

"Good."

"You should wear a hat," she ventured eventually, in her half-defensive, half-arrogant way, probably in Spanish.

"Hats are terribly unfashionable," he returned. He unscrewed the thermos, pouring out another hot tipple.

"Is that coffee?" Zoe said, longing in her voice.

"Yes. Have some," he said, putting the cup into her hands.

"It's yours," she said dubiously.

"I'm done with it," he said calmly.

_"Be nice to Zoe," Sarah had said to him yesterday, shuttering her eyelashes to oblong catty slits. "Pretend she's Finnvah. You love Finnvah."_

"_I love Finnvah because he's mine."_

_"Finnvah's yours because he_ loves_ you," Sarah had countered._

He wondered if Sarah would forgive him for what he had to do. She was marvelously good at forgiving him. And in any case, he'd read all the books. He could take care of Sarah just as well as young Shiprah, now that he knew what the danger was.

Shiprah smelled the coffee, enjoying it, drinking in the rich aroma before she took her first sip. He looked at her as she drank, letting her know how completely he was scrutinizing her.

"How does it taste? Good?" he asked. She flicked a nervous glance at him, and nodded. Scratch the bravado, and underneath she was terrified of him. That pleased him.

_It's fine_, he reassured himself, feeling the knife-handle press against his ribs. One quick movement, and he'd slit her throat clean as clean. It would be almost painless for her. But he hesitated, just a bit. The sky needed to be lighter. Dawn, or sunset, that was the time for such things. The cup trembled in her grasp. Her animal instincts understood that this was some sort of trap, even if her quick and clever mind refused to understand. It would be best to engage her in some conversation, to calm her. Killing her might be emotionally upsetting, and he was determined that both of them should feel as little as possible in the whole business, himself particularly.

"Tell me why you were wearing that glamour," Jareth demanded. "The old woman."

Zoe pursed her lips together, considering. "Nothing is as invisible as a woman," she said. "Fat old women doubly so."

"And it had nothing to do with this?" he goaded. He reached out a thumb and traced the shape of the twisted scar on Zoe's forehead. "Using glamour to cover your scar, the little reminder against impudence?"

The frown on her face became anguish. "Don't," she pleaded, twisting her head away.

Ah, when she had been young, she'd been fierce, demanding to know where she came from, demanding to know the names of the mother and father who'd made her. Jareth himself by that time had forgotten. "_You belong only to me_," had been the answer to the question that had brought the scar. "_You may feel any way you like about that, but it is absolutely so. The ones who bore you forgot you. Reality forgot you. You, and your brother. You would have died alone and starving to death in your crib, your body rotting under their noses, and they wouldn't even have known to mourn. Be grateful, and thank me."_

She had slapped him with an open palm containing a church-nail, cursing him, trying to use his name against him, trying to have power over him. Well, she had gotten a reaction, but not the one she'd wanted. The pain of the iron had been exquisite and deep, and in agonized surprise he had lashed out with his ungloved hands, raking one long jagged wound down the center of her forehead. He had only felt a momentary regret about hurting her, and that regret was mostly for marring something otherwise aesthetically perfect. His wound had healed in a matter of hours. Hers, perhaps never.

_She belongs to me, Jareth reminded himself. I gave her life, her and all the other nephilim, my un-children. I may dispose of them as I wish.  
_

* * *

Magnesium flares of flash-bulbs sparked through the party like lightning. Once or twice a photographer caught him in the evil eye of the lens, an unusually good-looking man in the black-tie-tuxedo-jacket uniform of an invited guest. They all assumed he was someone famous. In that, they weren't incorrect, though it was the fae who all knew of him. Any of these human beings, even the strongest, would have died under the weight of such notoriety, died screaming their lungs out.

He smiled to himself, hating them all equally, hating the flesh he had in common with them. This smile, true, seemed charming and affable. He had practiced it in the mirror until it was second nature.

He had come to this party to wage war. His opening gambit was to steal a glass of champagne and sidle in close to Linda, who looked every inch a pampered slave to art, in her black velvet dress and her vast collar of paste diamonds which resembled nothing more than a halter.

"Linda Sophia Williams," he said to her, slamming his glass against hers so that the foam mingled between them. In a dream of her own importance, she smiled up at him, ready to receive compliments. He stared down at her until he felt her feeble soul quail. She looked down at her glass, and it was that moment that a stray photographer decided to commit to film.

"You…" she said, daunted. "I know you."

"I should hope so, Linda Sophia Williams." He clamped down on her soul with the nails of his will and the power of her name, but not enough for her to feel it yet. "I truly would think so. I read the playbill. Not even an author's credit for me, with half of my own words in your tatty little play? I'm insulted."

"You're that lunatic," she said, backing up a step, drinking her glass down in one go. "The one from Radamanthus Asylum."

"Yes, I suppose I am. Don't steal my scene, little actress." He squeezed her soul, just enough to be felt, just enough to hurt. He compelled her to come close to him again and set their glasses down on one of the white-draped tables.

"What do you want?" she asked, all a-tremble, understanding that the danger he posed wasn't just physical. Her eyes flickered over his shoulder, looking for help that wasn't there.

"I came to speak to Jeremy. Where is he?" He kissed her on her jaw for the audience's benefit, just a fan of the performer, perhaps a fan of the more intimate persuasion. Linda Sophia Williams already had a reputation for sexual scandal. She flinched under the kiss, as if it were a slap.

"He's not here," Linda gasped. She was lying, he knew, but he chose not to punish her for it. She was, after all, trying to protect her lover. It was an admirable, futile gesture. He held her at arm's length and smiled his practiced smile on her.

"When you see him again, Linda-Sophia-Williams, tell him the Goblin King is waiting to speak with him, in his dressing room at the theatre. Tell him to come alone, or I will do things to you both that neither of you shall relish." His talons bit into her soul again to drive his point home, and then he left.

His appearance at the party left no trace on the world except for a single photograph and a captioned article in one of the arts gossip rags: _Linda Williams: "On-Off" Romance? Back Together?_ The audience had, as usual, misunderstood everything.

* * *

Fifteen minutes later, Jeremy had knocked tentatively upon the door of his own dressing room in the decrepit theater where the wretched play was performed nightly. Jareth was waiting for him, resplendent in his formal dress, pleased with the setting.

"So. Goblin King," Jeremy said, making a mocking bow that ended in uncertainty as he heard the goblins whispering and muttering to themselves behind props and curtains. "You wanted to talk to me?"

"Jeremy Lys. I am here because your play's words tug at me, and demand my attention. Stop performing it."

"Why?" Jeremy asked, innocence incarnate. "You gave the poetry away. Now you want it back? Why should I?"

Jareth frowned in severe displeasure, all the more so because Jeremy spoke true. "I don't know why it's happening, but something of my essence is leaking out through your production. It's like an open wound for me. You must stop." He hadn't meant to appeal to Jeremy's compassion or to admit to his own weakness. Nonetheless, the play was both potent and damaging.

He had felt the seeds of his own unwillingly-bestowed magic working and germinating the world when it had been performed in the smaller confines of the Triptoleme University theater department a few years ago. His words, and the magic in the words, had been meant to knit life back into a human woman's womb, to wake the stillbirth she carried. The words still had that potency and that potential, and the magic did what it did without his wanting it to be so. The play infected the few pregnant women in the audience with fae magic when it was performed. Some of pregnancies had come to term in unexpected ways. These children were fae-touched, like Robin's son. They had to be collected and placed with his allies in the mortal world, lest either they die or be discovered by his enemies and used against him.

For himself, with few exceptions, he cared for none of these children. He wished them unborn. Once the play stopped, he would never be forced to commune with humanity again, or need to relive his humiliation and defeat by stealing children from oblivious parents. He would never have to collect another child with the ghost of Robin in its infant face. He could be done with them.

"You could have just asked," Jeremy said, again acting as though they were peers, as though the Goblin King was some commoner. "You didn't have to frighten Linda."

"Linda has the good sense to be afraid of me. I don't know why you don't." Jareth put his hands on his hips, striking an intimidating pose. "The easiest way for me to have what I want is to kill you both. Unfortunately, the play exists now and could exist again. It would wait for someone else to pick it up and use it, especially if it bears the scent of the creator's romantic tragedy. What I need is your cooperation. You say I should have asked? I am asking now."

His hidden goblin chorus laughed, and Jeremy swiveled his head, trying to clap eyes on them, unable to see them. Jareth smiled his unpracticed smile, the one that showed all his teeth.

"Please," Jeremy stuttered out, "Tomorrow is important, the most important night. There's a producer coming, he could really advance my career—" Jeremy reached out a hand, as if to touch him, to actually touch him! Jareth caught his wrist in his sleeve and twisted it.

"Jeremy Lys, you are in grave error, refusing me. You are reckless, playing around with power you don't understand. You steal from others without a thought to the damage you might do. Borrowing Linda from Robert, for example, even though she wears his name."

"They're separated, planning on divorce. We belong together. And the play belongs to me now, Goblin King. I've changed it. I've made it into something new." He tried to shake off Jareth's grip, wincing at the pain, but keeping his eyes fixed on his, defiant.

"Here are some words for you, Jeremy Llys, since you like my words so much," Jareth murmured in low and intimate tones. "Here's a curse I set on you. You will have great success, but your genius will never again overcome your own mediocrity."

He dropped Jeremy's wrist. Jeremy rubbed it resentfully.

"As for Linda, I have her name. I can do anything I want her. I could bend her heart back to her husband, and leave you aching and alone. I could crush her down," and he demonstrated his strength by cracking a palette of makeup in neat halves, "to bone and sinew, warp that flesh you like so much, and make her a dwarf's doxy." He threw the resultant powdery mess over Jeremy's shoulders, besmirching his black tuxedo with the color of flesh.

"Don't hurt Linda," Jeremy said in a cringing tone, and Jareth knew he had finally gotten through to him. "Please, we didn't mean any harm. We just wanted… something beautiful in the world. Please don't hurt her." He clasped his hands in supplication, eyes full of the fear he craved, and Jareth felt himself mollified.

The 'please' made him consider other options—that and his obeisance, that and his obvious willingness to sacrifice himself for Linda, mirror to her earlier attempt protect Jeremy.

"I have never seen your play entire," Jareth admitted. "Perhaps it's time I gave myself the pleasure." He tapped his chin, considering. "Robin's words, my words transformed by the alchemy of your genius… my own power, amplified by your soul. I'll offer you a bargain. I will come and watch this play of yours, tomorrow night, at its _last_ performance. If there's anything in it that moves me, or compensates me for my pain, I'll revoke my curses and ignore you both in the future. If it fails to move me…" Jareth shrugged indifferently. In one more performance, how many nephilim could possibly be engendered? Three? Five? Surely not more than that, and then wound would finally close. "If it fails to move me, I'll teach you the nature of anguish so thoroughly that you won't need to borrow mine."

"I agree," Jeremy said with haste.

"Good." A fell wind blew through the closed room, disturbing script-pages, brushes, and masks. The goblins scampered through the room, diving into the ragged holes through reality and back to the Labyrinth. "But now a warning. I have no soul in my body, and I hate all your kind. My heart is difficult to move. It would have been better to have submitted at once." He backed up one step, and then another, and vanished into his own reflection in the mirror.

* * *

"Whose picture was that, in your bag? The one you kissed." Jareth smiled to himself as he saw Shiprah wince.

"My brother. And one of my adoptive mothers."

"How is your brother, by the way?" Jareth asked, pouring young Shiprah more coffee. "Of the two of you, I seem to remember he was the more obliging."

"Dead!" she said, giving him a look of intense fury.

"What?" The thermos dropped from his hands in shock. The dregs of the coffee steamed and scoured the snow. "What do you mean, dead?"

"I mean dead," she said. Her green eyes were balefire as she threw the cup away. "Didn't you know? Aren't you God? House Crocus is gone! One of your kind ate them up. They're all dead. Fuck you!" She tried to run, but her feet slid out from under her. He caught her easily, a snatch of the hands, a twist of the arms, and she was bent backward over the edge of the battlements. The position of their bodies gave him a moment of deja-vu, but he didn't care to decipher why.

One hard shove, and he could snap her spine. Or perhaps he would throw her off, and let her head crack open on the stones below. Or the knife. There was still time for the knife, though it would be awkward to pull in this position. Poured out as a human sacrifice, the fae ichor running through her human veins would contain magic enough to give him what he needed. Her hands, gloved, clutched at him, struggling. His hands, naked, slapped her across her face.

"Fuck me? Fuck _me_?" He laughed, trying to decide which death to give her.

"You think God doesn't see you?" Zoe gasped, still trying to break his hold on her coat. "You think you won't be judged for what you do?" She kicked out at him, and her center of gravity tipped further out over the edge. All he would need to do at this point was … let go.

"You think God won't scruple to punish your wife and your unborn child for _your_ sins?" She was calm now, though crying, the tears freezing on her face. "And me too," she whispered. "Go ahead. Let me go."

* * *

Jareth watched the play in semi-seclusion, in a theater-box overstuffed with sound and light equipment. From this perch, he could command a view of both the performance and the audience. He was greatly bored with most of it, and where he wasn't bored, he was almost physically irritated. Robin's poetry was all encased in scenes too apt, too direct, to give him any pleasure. However, the emotional tension between the Goblin King and Meander's Queen kept him from summarily leaving. Jeremy, Linda. Bronze mask, white dress. The energy which crackled between them was almost tangible. They yearned for each other across a vast gulf, souls longing to touch, and could not quite meet.

"Give me my husband. Give me the child. Through dangers untold, and hardships unnumbered, I have fought my way here to the Castle beyond the Goblin City, to take back the ones you have stolen. For my will is as strong as yours, and my kingdom is as great."

Linda's tears were genuine. They dripped down her face on cue, more precious than the plastic pearls and paste diamonds that dotted her hair.

"You have no power over me," the Goblin King said, cold and implacable. In those words, Jareth heard an iron door shutting forever.

They had to know that the Goblin King himself was watching this farce, that their fates would be decided by the content of the performance… and yet, they were as ritually precise as a priest and priestess, enacting some beneficial rite. White dress, bronze mask, the power of their love for each other and their art humming like electricity in the air. Like lightning about to strike.

_Robin,_ he thought. _Robin. I wish you hadn't left. You should have gone with me. I would have been your husband. Your son would have been my son. But you left me alone. You left me with Channard._ Overbrimming with pain, Jareth looked into the audience.

Channard was there.

Jareth secluded himself more securely in the shadows of his gilded box. He had told him on their parting, "You will want me, and seek me, and need me, but you will never find me." Either the subtle magic of the play had drawn him to this place, like spoor, or more likely he had seen his picture in the papers, and made inquiries. It came down to the same thing. Here Channard was, wanting and seeking and needing. Jareth felt the fear and the pain and the hate for him come to fruition in the place where his heart was.

The doctor's handsome face was as cold as the bronze mask of the Goblin King, as immobile. Closer to forty now than thirty, impeccably dressed, his sandy brown hair had grown down low to his shoulders. Jareth stroked his amulet, two fingers pressing in under his boiled shirt, remembering, remembering everything.

Jareth tried to turn his attention back to Linda and Jeremy on the stage, but he'd lost the thread of their narrative. It was the doctor's performance that held him.

Channard's face was streaming with tears. Jareth didn't want to look at him, but he couldn't help himself. He had cursed Channard most thoroughly. He had cursed him to endure flesh and life, without hope of love or delight, cursed him to end in pain and bound by fear and madness. And yet there that vile creature was, and the play had brought him a semblance of comfort. What was the nature of this comfort? Why was his enemy taking what he himself couldn't find?

Even now the doctor had to know that Jareth would never forgive him, and never take back his curse. Yet for the first time, Jareth scented the emotions of guilt within him. In this moment, Channard was living his sentence, and acknowledging it well-earned… and yet he was somehow able to find peace and comfort by seeing the Goblin King on stage granted the unearned mercy of the Queen he had ruthlessly tormented.

Under the lights, Meander's Queen had freed the Goblin King from his heavy bronze mask. His blond hair floated down free. Exhausted, mortal, surrendered.

_Could this also be the way for me?_ Jareth wondered. _Could I also go to Channard and forgive him? If I granted him mercy, would I feel any better?  
_  
Meander's Queen stroked the Goblin King's head where it lay in her lap, murmuring words of love and forgiveness.

It was such a calming thought, like mist creeping up over a field at night. Almost, he let it take him. But then he remembered Channard's face, his touch, his power wielded without mercy, and worst of all of these, his cowardly, human tendency to make others pay for what he wanted to acquire. The cool mist broke under the fire of his hatred.

_No. He took his pleasure from my pain. Now I'll take mine from his. He'll never be free. Not until he dies._

He turned and groped for the exit, finding it hard to see. His face was wet.

* * *

Jareth felt Zoe under his hands. There was fear and defiance and terror and the anticipation of death in her face, and he'd put it there.

He had become Channard.

"Oh," Jareth said. "No."

He pulled Zoe back and set her on her feet. His legs felt boneless, weak. He slid in the icy patch of frozen coffee and landed with an undignified bump.

He asked her the question Channard would have asked him, if he'd been wise. "Will you forgive me?" Jareth asked. "My behavior is inexcusable, and I feel ashamed."

"You're not going to kill me, then?" Zoe asked. Her voice was as breathy and light as a terrified child. She _was_ a child, still. Had she known all along what he'd intended to do, summoning her out here in the hour before dawn? _Yes. Yes, she knew_.

"No," Jareth said. "I promise, I'll never knowingly try to hurt you again." He drew his knees up to his chest and buried his face in his hands. The bones from the birds' wings stabbed him uncomfortably in the buttocks, and the wind was cold.

He wasn't sure when, but her mittened hands lifted his off his face, and she helped him stand up, with an amount of strength he hadn't suspected she'd possessed. "Why?" she asked. "And why didn't you?"

"Because the Labyrinth is dying. Because I'm desperate, and I'm not a good person. But I'm _trying_. I'm trying not to be a bad one."

"I suppose I forgive you, then, Goblin King," Zoe said shakily, but with a touch of her personal dourness creeping in. "But I still don't like you." He smiled a little at that.

He picked up the thermos and the cup and screwed them back together. He would have to carry this thing back to its place. He was excellent at summoning things, but rubbish at returning them to their proper places. The Wide Tract of Rottenness was testament to that. As, technically, was young Zoe.

"I am sorry to hear about your family, young Shiprah. Truly. It's a blow."

"Yes," she whispered. She scrubbed the edge of her mitten against her eyes. "I want to—" but he never learned until later what she meant to ask, because the ground trembled under their feet.

"What was that?" she asked, holding to the stone lip of the battlements.

"Oh. That?" Jareth looked out into the Labyrinth. The mountain in the distance was shedding its snowcap in a slow avalanche, visible by its brightness in the darkness. Light ruptured the clouds, forking lightning, three simultaneous levinbolts. He kept his voice calm. _I've been expecting this, haven't I? It's time. I've chosen. Too late to stop it now._ The lightning seemed to trickle down the rockface and pulse in white rivulets that tore and cracked at the earth. "That's a visitor I've been expecting."

The pulse of the tremor came again, stronger.

"Who is it?" Zoe asked. He pushed the thermos into her hands.

"Go inside and stay with Sarah." The wind whipped his hair around his face. Cold before, now it was cold enough to cut and shatter.

"Who is it?"

The last words John Company had spoken came to him:_ "Where winter is, there am I. In the screen and ice I lie. When the days in your kingdom grow short, and the nights turn cold, come to me again, and we shall bargain on better terms._"

"Disaster," Jareth said. "Disaster and ruin. Run along." He threw himself into the air and became an owl. It was time to meet with the King of Winter once more.

* * *

**Next… Chapter 9: "The Hanged Man"**

* * *

_Thanks to my beta, Frances Osgood, who makes considerable sacrifices to edit this hot mess for me._

_I've made a few little literary references here and there, but I don't recall what they were any more. If you recognize one, please mention it in a review (Did I mention I love reviews, always?)._

_"Nephilim" is the third in a series of related longer works related to Henson's Labyrinth. The character of Channard can be found in the Labyrinth prequel, "Exile from the Labyrinth: The Lament Configuration." More information about Sarah and Jareth and Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix can be found in the Labyrinth sequel, "Labyrinth: Kingdom Come." Just, you know, if you like what you're reading but are sort of confused about who all these original characters are and where they fit. :D_

**Fanny**: All is not well with Egg, no. But maybe it will be. It's a girl! Or it will be. Or might be. So much depends on the choices people make.

**Jetredgirl**: Glad you liked it! Jareth is a bit of a bastard in this story, though I think most people would be willing to forgive him for that. He IS trying.

**Panda**: Delicious and nutritious, your reviews. Thank you so much. I'm exhausterpated. This chapter was a rough write.

**comical freaka**: I feel only slightly bad about the cliffhanger, since I've gone and done it again this chapter.

**Zayide**: So: worth her weight in gold, hmm?

**irgroomer**: Yeah, it's not good.

**brylcreem queen**: we finally get to meet an antagonist in the next chapter. Disturbing messages will be explained in greater detail.

**Sonata IX**: Finn's a sexy cowboy, howdy-howdy-howdy. His nearly unflappable good humor makes my day. Glad you're fond too.

**Jalen Strix**: There's definitely something going on with Egg, but perhaps it'll all work out okay. Hopefully. Loving your "Quirrell Drabbles and Short Fiction;" I'd ask you to write more soon, but I'm starting to get a heady feel for just how awful it is to write tragedy. Emotionally expensive, is what it is.

**Whyndancer**: I so totally enjoy your Bits &amp; Pieces. Jimmy-Jack-John and Hoggle are definitely coming into this story. Oh yes. Your instincts do you credit, but they could be made to serve the King of Winter Be very careful what you spell into the world.


	9. The Hanged Man

**Chapter Nine: The Hanged Man**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 9:**

"Mirrorgate: The Southern Oracle"—The Neverending Story soundtrack, Klaus Doldinger &amp; Giorgio Moroder  
"Flesh and Blood"—Oingo Boingo  
"Corporate Cannibal"—Grace Jones

* * *

The wind was killing-cold. It struck through his feathers like teeth. It wanted to take him in its jaws and bite down to his heart.

Jareth cut his wings against the wind, fighting it, attempting to master it. It objected to his existence, needing to beat him down to the ground, hating him. He refused to be beaten. He tested it in one direction, and then another, looking for a way up, a way through.

_You need not be so fierce_, Jareth rebuked the wind. It responded with another rebellious gust that sent him into a flat spin, head over tailfeathers… and then he was above it, in a current that thrust him ruthlessly toward the crouched hulk of the mountain.

He tilted his head, an owl's frown, and watched the Labyrinth passing underneath him.

"_Turning and turning in the widening gyre. The falcon cannot hear the falconer's call. Things fall apart; the center cannot hold."_

At the foot of the mountain, great fissures cracked open within the snow-blocked paths of the Labyrinth, and spread. Out of some of these, great stabbing pylons of ice rose up, quick as dew turning to frost. The mountain shaped itself into a fortress in front of his eyes, thirteen-tiered, diamond-iced.

The razor-sharp points of the curtain-wall reared up as though to chew him as he reached the perimeter of the Observatory. No, not just an observatory any more. A castle. A castle fit for the King of Winter.

_This isn't right, _Jareth thought. _There is_ one _castle at the center of the Labyrinth. One castle, one King!_

_"The blood-dimmed tide is loosed,"_ the poetic voice murmured fiercely, _"and everywhere, the ceremony of innocence is drowned."_

He backwinged, answering the instinct to retreat, but the gale mocked his efforts. It gripped his body hard and hewed him to his course. He felt like a crystal, ice-cold, being thrown at a target. He felt manipulated.

Lightning struck the apex of the mountain again, close enough to puff his feathers with static, close enough to make the tips of his wings glow with St. Elmo's fire. Struggling to fly with cold-numbed wings, his body was reflected in zigzag trails of ice and glass of the trails below. The adversarial wind pushed him upward, impatient to deliver him to his destination. He surmounted the last crystalline rampart and plunged into the caldera, shaking himself down into man-shape as he landed.

_"The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity…"_

Jareth stumbled a moment, disoriented. No more wind to howl madness into his skull; the air was perfectly silent, perfectly cold. The snow hovered in midair, a snow-globe filled with syrup. He combed heavy flakes of white and grey from the air and looked around with growing panic. The laughing crows were frozen to their branches and rookeries, cocoons of ice containing dead flesh, or—he caught a whiff of cooked meat and burnt feathers—lightning-zapped, their black feathers and ash floating down with the snow. These were the grey wisps that smeared his hands. He fanned the air to keep the ashes from landing against his skin, with minimal success. His feet slid on the treacherous ice under his feet. It sealed over the broken portal, clear as glass, revealing only darkness underneath. "Neringia?" he gasped out. It was cold, so cold. He gagged on the taste of ashes and meat. "Errolan? Rephaites?"

Silence, and silence. He heard a crack like a shot, and flinched. The ice underfoot was now ruptured by a whistling hairline break. Carefully, so as not to break the ice any further, he crept closer to examine the bent shapes of the stone giants huddled before him along the periphery of the ice, and understood why they hadn't answered him.

The three stone ancients who guarded the portal to the Observatory had been blasted apart, the rock itself shattered and metamorphosed by the King of Winter's vulgar use of his power. The lightning had utterly destroyed them.

_Neringia, Errolan, Rephaites. Ah, no. No. _His heart jumped in his chest. This was worse than the King of Winter's arrogance in erecting a castle in his kingdom, yes, far worse.

Jareth reached forward, seeing the outline of Errolan's face in the rubble, and withdrew his hand as quickly. The stone was still hot. He wondered when and how he might be able to stack them upright again. _When Winter ends? When will that be? Never?_

"Please," he said. "Help me. Speak to me, please."

Nothing, nothing. And there was nothing now he could do here. John Company's opening move in this game had been a devastating one. He decided it was time to leave. As he stepped sideways, preparing to leave this grave-pit and return warm and snuggly next to Sarah, he remembered what he'd told Bee about mastering the art. What had he said? "_When you can hold your right elbow in your right hand, I'll teach you."_ Ridiculous to talk of moving to a place in oneself that was oneself; the Labyrinth was his, a piece of himself as absolutely himself as the colors of his eyes. He stepped, and he felt something in his head shatter.

The pain was indescribable. He squeezed his temples between his hands, trying to keep the shrapnel from exploding through his skin. He blinked, feeling tears leaking out from his left eye. When he wiped them off, there was a smear of red on the cuff of his glove. The horrifying awful pain in his head became a viselike ache. And he could still see from his injured eye, though his sight was dim, and tinged bloody.

_This isn't possible_, he thought. _It's just not possible_. He reached out with his essence, trying to feel for the thousand, thousand cords that bound him to the Labyrinth, and instead felt… nothing. Dizzy, helpless, he stumbled.  
_  
"Surely some revelation is at hand for you, my fine feathered friend." _With a sinking feeling, Jareth finally recognized the voice. It was Channard.

_No. Not you. _He shook his head.

"_How are we today?"_

Jareth sighed. Those were the first words that Channard had spoken to him, and Channard had been the first person whose words he had understood. Coming to consciousness in a purely human body had been painful, even though he had prepared as thoroughly as he could for the experience. There had been a sense of pieces falling into place, parts aligning into form, chemical fires ricocheting in his skullpan, and then those words. Angry, honest, his response had been a request: _Set me free. Set me free from this box of iron, this house of bars, and the low stink of food. Set me free from the burden of my own flesh. I thought I wanted it, but I do not. I would rather be nothing than be this. "How are we today?" Deeply apprehensive, sir. My heart is a metronome in my chest, a ticking clock that will never run down. It is very loud, my heart._

And the doctor had _smiled_. It had been a beautiful smile, the smile of a collector lowering a particularly beautiful specimen of Lepidoptera into the killing-jar. Then to stretch it. Then to pin it. Jareth had understood, all at once, that this man was his adversary. His words had been calm and professional, signifying nothing. His scent, the tightly-concealed edges of his secret desires and fantasies, had said much more. _He is my enemy_, Jareth had thought.

_How am I, Doctor-Phillip-Channard? I'll tell you how I am. I'm angry, and very much put-upon._

_"You're the one who summoned my ghost, Tyto Albans. I suspect you miss me."_ Channard's voice, a parasite of memory, wriggled through his mind._  
_  
"No," Jareth muttered. He took his fur-lined gloves from his belt and stuffed his stiffening fingers inside. The crack in the ground had become a trench, and it was angrily sucking in snow and ice. He braced himself against the ambient warmth of Neringia's ruined body. He could almost imagine that the doctor was physically present with him, young and handsome, moving in and out of reality like the shadow of leaves, cold as death. He shuddered, reached around for some sort of shield for the doctor's voice. _Yesterday upon the stair, I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd go away. Go away. Go away, Philip._

He felt the doctor's touch on his skin, dry, soft, strong fingertips stroking the back of his neck. Panicking, he opened his eyes and flailed against those hands, but only touched himself. His gaiter had left his neck bare; his glove-tips came away with handfuls of dark feathers and ash.

"Enough!" he shouted to the empty air, disgusted and enraged. He wanted Sarah, who held him in her open hand. He could fold her up warm in his arms, warm from her eyes, enclosed in her eyes, safe. _Human being, stars and green_. There were dreams he could play with, and dreams he could fight with, but this particular nightmare always undid him. "Sarah," he said raggedly. _Sarah, help me!_  
_  
"There's no help from that direction, Tyto Albans. Not that there couldn't have been, but you were arrogant enough to want to face the King of Winter alone. And let's not forget, your wife is having quite a dangerous pregnancy on top of all your other troubles. You need me. I won't sugar-coat hard truths, or gently coax you to eat them. Your Labyrinth is in desperate straits. It's starved of life and magic. It's iced up and walled off from human perception, and it's feeding from the only source it can—your child. It will kill your child. Then it will devour Sarah, and then, depending on how long Winter lasts, it will feed on you as well. You are all going to die."  
_  
Jareth shivered and clung more tightly to the fading heat of the wrecked cairn. _No we won't! I command the powers of the Labyrinth! I am King! Otherwise what was the point of enduring you, Channard? What other point could there have possibly been to all that misery, if not to have my kingdom?_

_"Jareth."_

And here he was startled out of his reverie; shocked into perception of how cold he was, how angry the sucking whirlwind of the portal had become. He began to shiver again, and the blood slowly worked back into his near-frozen extremities with glass-shard prickles. Channard had never spoken his name—had never known how to speak his name.

_"Jareth, the King of Winter will take the Labyrinth."_

Jareth stood up straight. It took effort to unbend himself against the lee of Neringia's back. The heat of the ancient's destruction had almost entirely dissipated. He tilted his face up and let the snow and ash paint his face.

_"If I were you, I'd do anything to hold on to my kingdom, and damn your wife and your baby. If you were me, you'd hew to pride. But then, if you've truly become like me, then perhaps I've had the last laugh after all."  
_  
The ice over the portal cracked wide, brittle ice under the weight of a careless skater. Jareth clutched instinctively at the ground and came up with handfuls of slippery snow and loose scree, and hung kicking at the edge of the pit.

_"Farewell, Jareth." _

And then the wailing vortex grabbed him, and pulled him down, into the icy hateful dark.

* * *

Wooden cradle, rocked in sleep. _Rockabye baby_, Sarah thought, becoming lucid. The taste of peaches was still on her lips from the night before, despite rigorous tooth-brushing and face-washing. Jareth would never tell her where the peaches came from, but he had offered one a night for the past seven nights. _Fairy food_, she thought to herself, _pure magic_.

"It will help you. It will help the baby," was what he had said, as he took up the fruit and sliced it with his knife. Bisected, it bled golden syrup into his gloved hands. "Trust me, Sarah." He cut down to the stone, and fed her the slices, one by one.

"Still worried you don't have enough power over me?" she had joked lamely, but it was a rebuke. She had pushed the slice back, pressed it against his lips until he ate.

"It feels like self-cannibalism when I eat it," he'd said, swallowing as though the taste were bitter. "This fruit was supposed to be the inheritance of the one who would rule here after me. It _is_ dangerous, but I don't know quite what else to do with it but feed it to you. You need it. To make the kind of magic I can't." He caressed her belly, his meaning obvious. "Please obey me," he'd murmured. And she'd obeyed.

She found herself weak and limp after the second slice, and unable to protest further. Pure magic, forbidden fruit, enchantment. His power was like a smothering weight, but it was too comforting to fight.

The fruit made her languid, but it also brought on that peculiar state of comprehension between the waking and the sleeping world. She could see around corners that weren't there. She could sense states of emotion and being in flux, smell them like delicate odors. She realized she'd been craving dangerous and immortal fruit the way other pregnant women had cravings for watermelon, or radishes. Rapunzel, Rapunzel, fruit from the enchantress's garden. So she ate, and didn't worry about the soil that fed the hungry, thirsty roots of the Goblin King's fruit.

_It's for you, Egg_, Sarah thought, excusing herself.

In that strange edge of existence between waking and sleeping, she could find and feel the power the fruit bought. She could feel her way inside herself, and find the baby, sleeping curled-up inside her, find the torn edge of the placenta and encourage her body to take it back up, reweave blood vessels, tie life and breath back to Egg. _Grow_, she thought to the baby. _Grow, live, breathe!_ It was difficult to know how much time this took; she was spending twelve hours out of every twenty-six sleeping, resting, recovering, hanging on to the lucid edge of dreams as long as she could, doing everything she could, and wishing she could do more…eat more.

Zoe hadn't approved of this; she said Sarah was losing flesh at the time when she should have been in full fluffy bloom. But the knots in the green ribbon kept coming further apart; the baby was thriving, even if Sarah felt worn out, like a patch of carpet under too many feet. "As long as the baby is fine, I'm fine," Sarah insisted.

Zoe had pursed her lips. "You're starting to smell like him," she said dolefully. "Whatever you two are up to, you should probably stop."

_No_, Sarah had thought, rolling over on her back. _Not until the baby is born. Not until I've made Jareth a father. Then I can stop. Please let it be soon. I'm so tired._

So now, sleeping in her cradle without a bough, she felt herself rocked outward, outside herself.

_Where am I?_

She was on a mountaintop, at the top of the world. She could see Jareth; he was talking to someone she didn't like. She tried to catch his attention, but his interlocutor moved in subtle ways so he was always between her and her husband, casting a shadow that hid her. She couldn't quite hear the words, exactly, but she understood that the man with the sandy hair was giving Jareth confusing and doubtful advice.

"Jareth!" she shouted, but he didn't hear her. She couldn't seem to get any closer to them, no matter how she tried, and Jareth wasn't listening to her.

"Winter has taken the Labyrinth," the sandy-haired man told Jareth. "Winter will destroy you all, if you let it."

"Jareth!" Sarah shouted. She seemed to get through to him, but the faceless man lunged at Jareth before she could touch him, and shoved him backward over the edge of the pit. Jareth held on to the edge, and she could have helped him up, but his demon interlocutor turned and looked at her for the first time.

"See what you've done?" he sneered. His face was a worm's slimy questing snout.

She screamed—

—and woke, sweating, her hand gripping for a weapon which wasn't there, looking to fight an enemy who wasn't there. She let go of the bedclothes slowly, and tried to calm her breathing. Egg thumped her with silent empathy. The adrenaline rush of the nightmare had woken them both. Sarah reached instinctively over for Jareth, and found his place in the bed empty and cold. She pressed her belly between her hands and squirmed over on her side.

The window let in faint light, and the wind howled and shrieked around the Castle. It was all so dark.

She'd been dreaming about… killing the worm. But it was dead, wasn't it?

There were wet footprints on the floor, as if someone had let himself in and closed the door behind him, waking her with the slam and a gust of cold air. There was a strange smell in the room, too, faint and unpleasant, like the air from the Bog of Eternal Stench when the wind was blowing powerfully in the right direction.

A bolt of lightning lit the room in momentary brilliance. And she thought she saw a shadow in the corner of the room, near the bathroom door.

"Who's there?" she asked, fearfully uncertain. She reached over and lit the lamp with a single quivering match. The flame was reluctant to take hold of the oil, and the light was small.

"It's me," a dark and gravelly voice replied.

"Hoggle!" she said, delighted. But then… not so delighted. Something was wrong. Something wasn't right. She clutched the covers up to her bosom. "How did you get in here?"

"You know well as I do I can open any door fer you, Sarah," he said, and his voice was full of bitter irony. "I did before, and I c'n do it again. So here I am."

"Come into the light," Sarah said. "I want to see you."

Hoggle stepped forward. He looked different. He wore a three-piece black suit perfectly tailored to his awkwardly squat body, and his hair had been carefully cut and styled and his eyebrows plucked. But the difference wasn't just in his appearance. It was something about the way he held himself—bolder, less craven. There was something hard and secretive in his eyes. There was something… cold in that face now, as if something evil were inside her friend, driving him like a goblin drove Humongous.

"So," he said, "I'm here ta rescue you." He smiled, and the smile was unpleasant.

"From what?" she asked, baffled. She remembered her dream. She was suddenly afraid for Jareth, which helped her forget the nagging edges of fear that were creeping around her heart, gripping it tight. "Rescue me from what?"

"I'm here ta rescue you from your marriage. You were my friend when nobody else was. Jareth's nasty and bad, but you ain't. So I've come to get you out, before he takes you down with him!" Hoggle paced back and forth on the edge of the light, consumed by some strange and hateful passion.

"I don't need to be rescued from Jareth," Sarah said coldly.

"Oh yes you do!" Hoggle shrieked, blue eyes blazing. _Yes, good, _Sarah thought. _Raise a riot. Summon the goblins, summon Sir Didymus and Zoe. I feel like I'm in danger here with you, Hoggle. That scares me._

"What's he ever done for you that I didn't do?" Hoggle raged. "He didn't show you through the Labyrinth. He didn't fight the goblin army with you. He never came to visit you or took care of you when you was sick. I did that!" He shook himself out of his reverie and looked at her.

"And I owe you for that?" she said neutrally.

"Damn straight," Hoggle hissed. "It's time I had what's mine. I earned it and he ain't. He's never been kind to anyone a day in his life. He's a user, and a thief, and he never pays what he owes. And you went to him and laid down with him like a whore, and I'm stupid enough to forgive you for that, Sarah!" His chest heaved, his hands were spiders creeping up the lapels of his suit. "Things are going to be fair in the Labyrinth, for once, just as soon as we get a change in leadership."

"I suppose that means you, sitting in Jareth's place." Her eyes felt hot and weepy. _My gun is in my bedside table_, she reminded herself. _Do I have it in me to hurt Hoggle? To shoot him?_ The tears spilled down her cheeks. "Sitting on his throne? What else? Fucking his wife, too? Is that what you want from me?"

"Them's nasty things to say," Hoggle said, jabbing an accusing finger in her direction. "You got a nasty mind. That's his influence, I bet, but there's still time for you to learn manners."

"You were a better person when you were running scared of Jareth than you were when you threw in your lot with the King of Winter." Her heart froze inside her as an obvious piece of the puzzle fell into place. "You set the King of Winter free," she whispered. "It was you."

Hoggle puffed with pride. "It was me."

* * *

Jareth didn't have far to fall before he landed, which was something of a relief. What was less pleasant was that he hadn't had time to transform into an owl and land properly, instead of being smashed against an icy floor like an unimportant parcel. The portal overhead clashed shut with a spray of snow.

He picked himself up, testing himself for injuries. His ears and nose felt frozen. His left hand, his smart hand, felt painfully numb and swollen, and the pain spread all the way up to his shoulder. Ah well, he wasn't here to play guitar.

It was dark. It was very dark. And… tight. He could feel the walls pressing in around him.

_Stop,_ he reminded himself. _For every room, there is a door. You simply have to see it._

The Labyrinth, in a beginning time that was hard to recall, had been only one passage, one center. It was one of the first changes he had instituted, carving doors and apertures where there had been none before. Not shortcuts, exactly—the Labyrinth never allowed for shortcuts. The journey was the journey. Rather, he had wanted places of egress, emergence, openings which were the reflections of possibility. It was still all one Labyrinth, and this place would be no different. If he were in an oubliette, that was one thing. But Company was expecting him. There would be a way through to the center of this icy copycat castle, if he could just find his way.

But it was so dark.

_You aren't now as you were then_, he told himself. _You aren't frightened and naked and alone. The King of Winter would like you to feel that way, but that's not how things are. Who are you?_

_A man_, he thought, and choked back a moan of fear. _I am a man, of indeterminate middle years, who was King of the Labyrinth not five minutes ago, with no weapons but my wit, my waning magic, and the murderer's knife sheathed near my heart._

_A mortal man with a wife and a child waiting for him. Time is wasting. Don't just stand here waiting for your beard to grow._

Slowly, achingly, he summoned a crystal. It wasn't a very large one, but it contained a soft warm light, the memory of summer. _See?_ he jollied himself along, _You're still capable of working some magic._ The light hovered somewhere near his ankles, and he could see the narrow passage out of the cold receiving-chamber. He walked slowly, since the corridors were made of ice upon ice which reflected light and sound back upon him in disorienting confusion. He could see images through the ice—the outer gates of the Labyrinth. An army mustered there, dwarves in fur and plate mail, some riding upon white bears, and others driving teams of mammoth. It was an invasion force.

_So,_ he thought, _It's to be an army of dwarves versus a city of goblins. That should be amusing._

He saw other things, as well, but ignored them. They were images from the past, or images from the present, and he could do nothing about them. This castle, despite whatever décor the King of Winter might have chosen to add, was still quintessentially an observatory. After a quarter-of-an-hour of choosing his way inerrantly, always down, always counterclockwise, Jareth hit a dead end. He turned around, but the ice had burgeoned from the passageways, blocking them.

_This is the way, though_, he thought, turning back to the choke point. He could never be confused about direction. It was one of his gifts. The way was through. The black ice had the qualities of a mirror, and he approached his reflection with trepidation.

He had to admit, he didn't look good. His left eye was rimmed with blood, and his hair had gone flat. It still remained a shock, after all these years, to see his own body, and to know it was his. The flesh was a companion that he could never leave behind. _Well, I might as well tend this kingdom, since I can't tend the other_, Jareth thought with resignation. He ran snowmelt through his hair and pricked at it until it all stood on fluffy end, and applied some lip gloss to mouth and then, after a moment, above his eyes, bubblegum flavor, highly soothing. Clothing… he readjusted the fall of his coat shoulders and the drape of his gaiter, over neck and chest until it ended precisely where his amulet began. He backed up to get the full effect. _Peasant_ was the word that came to mind. Rustic peasant, in brown wool and snow-stained boots. Worse yet, _human_ peasant. Well, there was no hope for anything better. He had dressed this morning for butchery, not for an audience with royalty. He raised a finger and scolded his reflection with a sardonic smile.

There was movement in the space beyond his reflection. Jareth stripped off his gloves, picked up his glowing crystal, and hid its warming light in his naked hand. _Ah, there_. Beyond the pane of ice was a banqueting-hall, the long table dressed in white. He drew his knife, and bashed the hilt against the glass until it shattered.

A heavy shriek of wind shoved him as the barrier fell, laden with the scent of dark wine, the color of despair, and glitter. He shielded himself with one arm, and when it had passed, looked again as he sheathed his blade. He could smell roasted meat bubbling steam and juicy fat from beneath one of the silver covers of the salvers on the banquet-table. He realized he was quite hungry, but he didn't think he'd have the stomach for whatever meal the King of Winter intended to serve him. Behind the table, nine ice-caked television screens projected the image of snapping white-green-blue fire on a cavernous hearth, but did nothing to alleviate the cold.

Jareth stepped up on the dais. Shards of ice crackled under his feet, very loud in the silence of the room. One chair was a glacial throne, well-padded with cushions of velvet brocade in the jade-white colors of American money. The other was little better than a stool made out of bone and leather. Near it was a cushion, suitable for kneeling. He smiled grimly to himself. John Company's metaphors had always been apt, if a trifle obvious.

So where was his host? Jareth lifted his chin and sniffed the air carefully. He could smell the petroleum wax of the candles, and the faint scent of cash, and the dusty acidic scent of toner, and the greasy-sweet reek of corn syrup. The smells spoke to him of emotions in the absence of their producer—gnawing hunger, aesthetic delight, tooth-grinding ambition, and… something else. The satisfaction of vengeance? These scents were all faint, though. Really, it was as if the stage had been set but the star had missed his cue.

He drew off one of the covers of the silver dishes. It contained a fragment of writing, just the half-finished piece of a poem on blue-lined paper, singed at the edges, as if someone had attempted to burn it, and someone else had rescued it from the fire.

**FEAR  
Once upon a time he stole her and kept her. He forced  
her body to yield to his. She tried to run away. He cut off  
her feet.  
"Now you will not run," he said.  
She tried to crawl away, and he cut off her hands.  
"Now you won't try a third time."  
But she tried a third time to escape, and he cut out his heart,  
and forced her to eat it.**

**Their relationship prospered thereafter.**

_So_, Jareth thought, picking up the paper and crumpling it in one hand. He stuffed the note in his pocket. _That's why he threatened to cut off Sarah's hands and feet. He got the idea from this, from me._ He felt ashamed and slightly embarrassed. There had been a time, and that time hadn't really lasted that long, two years perhaps, when the idea of luring back and fucking with the very nubile, very alluring, very young Sarah Williams , triumphant conqueror of the Labyrinth, had run like a fever in his blood. He had made a few plans, but when he wrote them down they had seemed so base, so low, that his pride had kept him from putting them in motion. The idea of cruelty, as with everything else, had eventually become boring to him. But still, the King of Winter's threats to hurt Sarah had just been iterations of his own thoughts, and that scraped Jareth in a very tender spot.

The illusion of the fire gave off no heat, but the screens projecting the illusion warmed the room infinitesimally. They shed their skins of frost in soft plops.

He drew off another silver cover, since it seemed as though John Company was determined to be not just fashionably late but downright careless with his most dangerous and doubtful guest.

A chess set.

"Chess?" Jareth asked aloud with distaste. "_Must_ you be so trite?"

The assignment of pieces was obvious. John Company's set was made of crystalized ice, bubbling with green fire. Jareth's pieces were made of brass and bronze and gold, and his King was in the shape of his amulet. _What's the intention here? To play a game for ownership of the Labyrinth? But doesn't he have it already?_

_What if he doesn't?_ he answered himself. Jareth scrutinized the pieces. His Queen was formed like a woman, a little doll all of brass, holding her own severed head in the stumps of her hands. Jareth picked up his Queen, and she was cold, cold enough to burn his hands. But he stroked the metal with, slowly letting her warm. In a sudden burst of anger, Jareth flipped the heavy board and scattered all the pieces. _Damn him! Where is he?_

He reached for a third dish, one from which steam poured, and the mouthwatering aroma of fat-marbled meat. His fingers hovered over the handle, warmed against the heat of destruction.

"Ah-ah-ah," The King of Winter's lilting, juicy voice chided from the darkness. "It's bad manners to begin your meal without your host."

_There_, Jareth thought to himself. _I can't see it, but I know where the door out of here is. It's just behind him._

_I'll have to go through him to escape._

* * *

Sarah swept the bedclothes down off her body and set her feet on the footstool. Gently, she smoothed her hand down her embroidered shift, cupping her Egg. She waited for Hoggle to take her in.

"Do you see?" she said. "Do you see what _I've_ done, Hoggle? Do you still want me, with a bellyful of the Goblin King's baby?" She opened her bedside table and pulled out her gun and nudged the safety off. She scrubbed her free hand against her eyes. _I'll make it quick_, she thought. _God help me, I'm a murderer three times over_.

"It's not possible," Hoggle said, cramming his hands against his mouth in horror. "It ain't true and it ain't possible!" Then his anger flickered up again. "It's not fair! Why does he get everything?"

"Because he's not a complete shit!" Sarah screamed. "Like you and John Company. Both of you throwing your weight around, thinking you could intimidate me! Don't you understand?" She stepped down from the bed and advanced on him. He backed up, terrified of her, and she was small enough to find that satisfying. Her voice was quieter now, hoarse from strain. She took a breath and she took her aim. Hoggle cowered and covered his face. "You've never understood that I'm the dangerous one. Jareth isn't the killer. I am." She cocked her weapon, and prepared to fire.

"My lady!" she heard Sir Didymus shout on the other side of the door. "My lady!" Didymus knocked on the door with his staff, and she heard him joined by a chorus of "Sawwah!" and "Yes-ma'am-lady!" and the counterpoint of Zoe leading the pack, barking at them, "_Dios mio_, if she's in trouble, yelling at the door isn't going to help!" By the last word, Zoe had opened the double-doors with a crowd of rescuers hot on her heels.

"Grab him," Sarah commanded. Hoggle threw punches and kicks wildly, trying to get away, to dodge and escape. Sir Didymus parried him with his staff and landed several painful-sounding cracks against knees and shins and elbows. Ludo picked him up before he could sustain too much damage.

"What's going on?" Zoe asked. Swollen palm-shaped bruises made her face grotesque. She was wearing her coat and her boots, too, which dripped water across the floor.

"I could ask you the same thing," Sarah said, but her words were drowned out as the dwarf, struggling, shouted and cursed them all. "Shut up or I'll shut you up," Sarah said. "They just saved your life, Hoggle." He quieted. "That's better," Sarah said. Her throat hurt from shouting. She clicked the safety on and tossed the gun on the bed, and eased herself down onto the bedstool. Zoe came over to her immediately and took her pulse.

"My Lady," Sir Didymus said, "Art thou hurt?"

"I'm fine, I think," Sarah said.

"Who's the dwarf?" Zoe asked, stroking Sarah's shoulder, darting glances over at Hoggle, who continued to jerk in Ludo's grip. Sir Didymus barked and shouted at Hoggle as he searched him, and declared the "varlet" to be "free of hidden arms."

"He's an enemy who used to be a friend." Sarah realized she was shaking. She didn't have time to cry. She'd cry later. "I ought to kill him. I know that's what I should do. But I can't. I can't."

"Doesn't this castle have sixty layers of dungeons or something? It has that kind of vibe." Zoe carefully massaged Sarah's shoulders, and lifted her hair up off her forehead, and blew a cool breath over it.

"I don't know. Anyway, I don't want him escaping. He's good with finding escape routes." Sarah was struck by inspiration. "How about the wardrobe?" she asked. "I can lock him up tight in there."

"That might work," Zoe agreed.

"Take my stuff out first," Sarah said. She wasn't sure if Hoggle could MacGuyver some sort of way out of a solid oak cabinet using just her dresses, shoes, jewelry, or lingerie, but she wasn't about to take that risk. And anyway, Jareth had given her these things; he'd made some of these things himself, with his own hands. She wasn't going to let Hoggle be in close proximity to things that were precious to her. Very quickly the wardrobe was emptied onto the bed and ordered up around the floor. At the very very back, where she'd forgotten about it, was the backpack she'd carried with her on her last journey through the Labyrinth.

"In you go, Hoggle," Sarah said. "Ludo, put him in." Flanked by Sir Didymus and Yimmil, Hoggle was deposited inside, and the heavy door shut on him. She took up her key and turned it in the lock.

Hoggle banged on the door once. "Let me outta here!" he yelled.

"If you use up too much air, you'll suffocate in there," Sarah yelled back. "And good riddance!" She looked at Zoe. "Where's Jareth?"

"He turned into an owl and flew off toward the mountain," Zoe replied. "And he told me to go with you and stay with you. He said something about 'disaster and ruin.'"

"Well, that's just great," Sarah said with the shreds of her voice. "Now someone's got to go rescue him." She waddled over to the bed, and worked angrily at the laces in her blue silk. _The velvet will go on top. What am I going to do for shoes? Maybe I can borrow a pair of Jareth's boots._

"What are you doing?" Zoe asked, helping her get the blue bodice over her head.

"I'm going to save him," Sarah said raggedly. "Isn't that obvious? Do me up please."

"Your Majesty," Zoe said, worriedly.

"Don't start," Sarah said, and realized that the tears had finally come, just when she was weakest. She sobbed her fear right into the crumpled green velvet of her second dress.

"Here, let me help," Zoe said, lacing up the back of her dress. "Now," she said, when Sarah was secure. "Here," she said, taking the velvet away from Sarah's face. "Please listen, Your Majesty."

"Don't tell me to get back into bed," Sarah said, hiccupping.

"I wasn't about to, though you should. I was going to say…" she glanced over at Sarah's friends, who had come close to comfort and assist her. "I was going to say, you're acting like a woman and not a Queen. You're not alone. You're never alone, if you're a Queen. Command us. Tell us what to do. We'll do it."

"That's right!" Sir Didymus said proudly.

"Yeah!" barked Yimmil. He crept up close under her arm.

"But he hit you," Sarah said, swallowing, and staring hard at the bruises on Zoe's face. "Why would you help him?"

Zoe looked surprised. "Well, for you," she said calmly. "I made a vow. And if you want me to rescue that _verga_, I suppose I have to do it."

"My lady," Sir Didymus said, doffing his cap to Zoe. "Hast thou considered a career in chivalry?"

"Not really," Zoe said, crossing her arms over her chest. She suddenly smiled at Sir Didymus. "You could make me change my mind, perhaps." She looked over at Sarah. "Now will you get back into bed?"

Sarah felt another wave of tears coming on, but these were tears of gratitude. Really, she was going to dehydrate if she wasn't careful. "I will, but I want to try something first before sending you all off into the snow." She wove and juggled the air, thinking of Jareth, wanting him, needing him. She thought of his strange brooding eyes, and the music he sometimes hummed under his breath, music that when voiced aloud seemed to command a thousand twangling instruments out of the ether to accompany his tune. She thought of his featherlight hair, his scent, his rare and edged laughter. A crystal formed at her fingertips. _Come to me_, she thought. _Be brought back to me._

She remembered her own words thrust back at her just as surely as if she were lakeside at the Swamp of Unfiltered Speech: _"I have to face him alone… because that's how it's done."_

* * *

The King of Winter stepped into the ice-washed light of the make-believe fire. Hair perfect. Clothing, also perfect, a pin-striped three-piece suit charcoal with digital information flickering in the seams. Rubbish and receipts and banknotes blew from his footsteps.  
_  
_"Hallo, John," Jareth said. "You're late. Shall we commence with the ritual insults before getting down to the business at hand?"

"By all means." The King of Winter tossed his ridiculous stovepipe hat onto the table. Jareth instantly recommitted himself to his anti-hat position. "Of all the entertainments to be had in this world or any other, baby-un-brother, I do believe the most amusing ones are your failures. I wish you could see yourself through my eyes. You were once the most treasured member of our siblinghood, but you've finally and completely ruined yourself, transformed into this hunk of manipulated monkey meat that now stands before me. The most spectacular of all failures; the funniest joke. Well done."

"Ouch," Jareth said. "That was a good one."

"Thanks," John Company drawled, easing himself down into his throne. "I've been saving it up." He stroked the amulet around his neck, a piece of rectangular obsidian. "Your turn."

"I'll defer until the end of the conversation," Jareth said.

"Oh, fine, spoilsport. I suppose I can forego cutting out your tongue, to let you have the last word. But don't expect any more generosity from me." The King of Winter waved his hand negligibly at the covered dish. "Go on, see the surprise that I cooked up for you."

Carefully, Jareth removed the cover.

"Of course, it may not be a dish to your taste."

It was a head. Cooked, the eyes gone to jelly and the meat sloughing off the cheeks, features unrecognizable, but the flesh still brown as milk-tea, and as tender. The stubble where a wealth of dark curly hair once grew. Two ivory horns curved out of the forehead.

"They say revenge is a dish best served cold, but I was always one to appreciate the heat. The mouth," Company said suddenly, viciously. "Look what's in the mouth! Chef's signature."

_Finnvarrah, oh Finnvarrah. My beautiful boy! This can't be you._ There was a thin roll of parchment held between soft lips. With trembling fingers, Jareth drew it out, and unrolled it.

It was skin, young Finnvarrah's skin. There was no mistaking it. The skin was tattooed in blue ink, and the words written there, in letters that Jareth himself had traced with the cutting edge of the very knife he had sheathed at his breast, were _the Robin's child, beloved of Prince Owl_.

"And before you make yourself a weeping mess beyond hearing me, know this, Jare'th. He earned his death. He killed she-with-asses-feet, Onoskelis, who was our sister. I made him pay for crossing me, your boy. I made his brothers and his fathers pay as well. Red Branch is destroyed, as are all the refugees you sent there from the Labyrinth."

John Company stared at Jareth coldly. "And this is just for an insult done to one of the lesser Gentry. Do you know what I intend to do to you and your apewife for the insults you've dealt _me_? I am going to break your heart, and then I am going to make you eat it. This is just the first course."

* * *

**Next… Chapter Ten: "Death"**

* * *

_Thank you, patient readers, for coming back for another helping of the hot n' juicy story I'm cooking up. Isn't it tasty? Isn't it sweet? Hopefully the quality of the meal makes up for the wait._

_Multiple kudos and succulent tidbits of gratitude for my beta du maison, FrancesOsgood, who does the final quality-check before items arrive at your table. Any continuity or grammar errors are the fault of yours truly._

_Since my lag time has been so long between chapters, I've had the opportunity to respond to all reviews for Chapter 7 via PM, and omg, you guys inspire and delight and help me so much. Thank you for your wonderful correspondence and for letting me natter. Reviews are always appreciated, and so a special thank-you to_

**_Fanny_**_, _**_Panda_**_, _**_Jetredgirl_**_, _**_brylcreemqueen_**_, _**_Askeebe_**_, _**_Whyndancer_**_, _**_comicalfreaka_**_, _**_Jalen Strix_**_, _**_Tamha_**_, _**_kzal_**_, and various _**_anonymous_**_ but kindhearted _**_guests_**_ and _**_others_**_ I may have unfortunately forgotten to mention._

_The character of John Company is directly inspired by Andrew Scott's masterful portrayal of Jim Moriarty from __Sherlock__. That line about eating hearts? "Burn the HEART out of you." Yup. Thank you, Moffat and Gatiss and Scott._

_This series (Exile's Lament, Kingdom Come, and __Nephilim__) is now boxed under the title "The Judex Cycle" for your convenience and pleasure. All three of these stories take place in the same version of the Labyverse._

_The poem that Jareth recites as a charm against Channard, "Yesterday upon the stair…" is an excerpt from "Antigonish," by William Hughes Mearns._

_The phrase "a thousand twangling instruments" is a riff on Shakespeare's __The Tempest__._

_I am tired and I want to get this chapter out from under the heatlamps and onto your table—so if you see a reference I missed, please note it in a review, and you shall have a sweetie._


	10. Death

**Chapter Ten: Death**

* * *

**Soundtrack for Chapter 10:**

"Everybody Wants to Rule the World"—Lorde  
"Heat" –David Bowie  
"Wind of Change"—Scorpions

* * *

Jareth laid his palm on the crown of the severed head. _My boy, my beautiful boy. Forgive me._

"So young, to have so much power," Company murmured. "One wonders what he might have become, given time."

"He was enough as he was," Jareth confessed unthinking, numbed in horror. "He was perfect, and I wish I had told him so." He spread his hands out in a familiar gesture, his thumb and pinky just touching the warm bone of his boy's horns.

It was that moment where he felt a flicker of hope. Things were not at all as they seemed to be, and this was not Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. His fingertips should have met those horns at their first joint, and they did not. He'd touched him this way too many times—the only gesture of affection toward the boy he commonly allowed himself—to be fooled by imitation.

He looked up to see the King of Winter smiling at the words he'd too carelessly let drop, gloating at his pain. Jareth lowered his head to hide his face as he considered the possibilities. The tattoos themselves were no sham—he had carved them into Finnvarrah's hip and thigh himself, and he knew his own work. _Is he alive?_ Jareth wondered. _Yes. If the King of Winter had him, he would bring him before me in chains, to use his life as leverage in this game._

_This is a game._

I'll make you pay for this," Jareth said, meaning every word.

"It would be amusing to see you try."

Jareth slammed the cover of the chafing dish down over the grisly remains—whosoever it was—and concealed the parchment-rolls of Finnvarrah's skin up his sleeve as he did so. "I trust he died well," Jareth said, as Company sauntered to the sideboard where there were confectionaries in towers and decanters of wine. _He's alive._ _But where is he, if Company has his tattoos? And where is young Toby?_

Jareth put his hand in his pocket and felt the warmth of his conjured crystal. It could show him either Finnvarrah or Toby, or both, if they were standing closely together. He desperately wanted confirmation of their safety, but he couldn't risk it. Not yet. _I'll be able to conjure one vision with this only, and that only if I'm lucky. I must save this for the endgame_. He removed his hand from his pocket just before Company turned his head to look at him.  
_  
_"He died squealing like a pig, begging for his father to come save him." Company's eyes were manic with glee. He poured a wine as black as his heart. "I saw to him myself." This last lie was so obvious as to be unimportant, but for the pleasure Company obviously took at the idea. _No word about Toby. He doesn't have either of them!_

"You destroyed an entire house of the Free People just for the transgressions of one. That seems excessive, especially after you destroyed House Crocus."

"No one cares about those soft-hearted healers," Company sneered, taking a sweet and crunching it between his teeth. "Their power was wasted on them. Anyway, I was hungry." The filling of the sweet was syrupy cordial; it stained the King of Winter's teeth with rust-brown blood. "Have some of these; they're quite tasty."

"You know I won't."

"Then perhaps you'll take some wine," Company suggested. He poured out a second goblet and left it on the table, not quite offering it to his guest. "You're weak these days. Weak," the King of Winter teased him. "I've found this vintage to be wonderfully restorative. Drink it."

Oh, that cup was alluring. The light caught on the crystal facets seemed to sing to him, begging him to partake. Fairy wine from a fairy ring, its heady smell spoke of children joyfully welcomed in old age, and children grieved for, dying in youth. He believed he knew the individual ingredients of this wine. Bottled House Crocus. Less than an hour ago, he had been within an inch of destroying their last child. He _was_ tempted, but drinking this wine would be an obscenity. He'd never be able to look Shiprah in the eye again.

He pushed the goblet away with one finger.

"How very human of you," Company said with disdain. "I'm disappointed."

"And I'm pleased to disappoint." He meandered around the table, took insolent possession of the King of Winter's own thronelike chair, and contemplated his own opening move. Beginnings were the roots of endings, and he needed this game to end with himself walking away free. He would be damned before he would be imprisoned in a box ever again.

He was going to have to ask a direct question. All of his instincts told him it was a question that he needed to have answered, but he would have to pay for it by answering a question of equal import. Those were the rules when dealing with the fae; like for like. "Why did you really want to destroy Red Branch? When the Free People find out, they'll turn against you in open rebellion. There must have been some greater profit in it than simple revenge. Tell me what that was."

John Company rubbed his hands together with delight. "Oooh, questions!" Thunder boomed far overhead as he answered. "I've averted the Autumn Oracle's prophecy. I learned of it some ten years ago, from one of the more forthcoming Red Branch boys." He saw the incomprehension Jareth couldn't hide. "Don't try to pretend you didn't know. The Autumn Oracle's last prophecy foretold that the Prince of Spring would come from Red Branch and the Labyrinth, born of woman, fae-touched, herald of Winter's end. That prophecy. That's what you were up to, hiding Robin's son among the red brotherhood. You thought to use your boy to destroy me. But your boy is dead and Red Branch is destroyed, and the Labyrinth will be mine, and Winter will reign forever. There will never be another Spring."

"Ah," Jareth said, raising his foot to inspect his boot. "I didn't know about that prophecy."

"Liar," Company snapped.

"Yes, there are certainly some lies perfuming the less-than pleasant air in here." Jareth nudged the dish containing the stranger's head with his boot-heel, making his meaning clear "But so far, they're all yours." _Your turn, John. I am calling your bluff._

"Oh, Jare'th. How I've missed playing with you. I'm not your servant, to fetch you notarized proof. So let's deal in essentials. Let's speak of the Labyrinth." Company smiled and sucked the chocolate from his fingers. "Your kingdom is slipping from you. I can taste your exhaustion and your fear. Answer _my_ question. Isn't it true that even now, the Labyrinth has drifted out of the never-never and surfaced into the world _I _control? Isn't it true that to take it, all I need to do is wait… for you to fall?"

The thunder sang again, somewhere over the mountain, as Jareth answered. "Yes."

"So you can see, I've been quite generous with you, inviting you to my table, giving you an opportunity to negotiate."

"Yes," Jareth said, more quietly.

"That's what I thought," Company said. "This conversation is all details. There is the side business to manage, however. Your she-ape, and how I plan to hurt her."

At this, Jareth sat up in his chair, heart fluttering in his chest. _No. He can't touch her_. "You might have a problem with that, considering she's not here to be hurt. Or do you have a packet of crisps in your pocket you're going to pass off as her heart?"

"Oh, she'll be along shortly," the King of Winter replied, eyes cutting at Jareth. "I sent the dwarf to fetch her. You remember him. He used to work for you, didn't he—Hoggle."

Yes." He ground his teeth over the word, cursing himself for leaving the dwarf to his own devices after his wedding-invitation had gone so rudely unanswered.

"Well, he works for me now." Company drained his wine and poured more. Jareth let his own glass go untouched, although the smell of it, heady with fae magic, still tempted him. "It didn't take much to convince him to change employers. You underestimated the dwarf's talents, Jare'th. He's proved a most valuable ally. He can unlock any door in this Labyrinth, he knows so many secret routes and passages through it… yes, Hoggle has been a boon to me."

"He's a craven and a bully, and makes up for it with the most monstrous ego." Jareth considered this. "Actually, saying that, I can see why the two of you get along so well."

"All three of us," Company agreed. "For aren't you also a coward and a bully? Ask the boy's head; he can tell us both a sad story about his mother, about how the Goblin King stole the few paltry coins she'd managed to store. The cruelest theft of all, however, must have been the theft of her child. Child of the robin. Robin Zakar. She ended in suicide, you know."

"I know," Jareth said. "And I know I'm paying for my sins now."

"Sin," Company sneered. "You need a _soul_ to sin, Jare'th, and even you haven't fallen that low. In any event, Sarah Sophia Williams trusts the dwarf. I believe the word he used was 'friend.' He will use persuasion to bring her. If that fails, he will use threats. She knows better than anyone else how mortal you are now."

"She's very late, if she's coming. Perhaps we should find out where she is." Jareth took out the crystal in his pocket, the crystal glowing with summer's fire, and was pleased by the surprise and dismay on the King of Winter's face as he summoned her image bold enough for both of them to see.

There was Sarah, standing in her bedroom, with Shiprah there to guard her, and the tiny fox-knight and the smelly orange night-troll who doted on her. She was holding a crystal. She was looking for him, just as he looked at her.

_I am alive and well, beloved_, he told her. _Stay where you are. I am coming back to you. _The crystal popped like a soap-bubble in his hands.

He saw quite clearly then what he'd have to do to make good on that promise, to get past John Company and make his escape from this awful zone of his power, and it was a terrible thing. It was truly a terrible thing. There was only a chance, one slim chance, that he wouldn't have to do it.

"You have no leverage, John. If you want to coerce me to abdicate, you'll have to do better than a stranger's head and confidence in that dwarf's ability to follow through." He picked up a fork from the place-setting and tested the sharpness of the tines. "It's your own fault I'm so tenacious. My trials made me capable of enduring quite a lot of pain, and your petty cruelties in the Observatory have only made me stronger. I have tolerated you like an inconvenient rash, and nothing you do will make me scratch." He shook his head. "Let me propose an alternative ending to this game. Let us declare stalemate. We can be as we were before, un-brothers and un-enemies. We will both walk away, both free, both alike in wounded dignity."

"Why would I do that, when I'm winning?" Company finished his wine.

Jareth narrowed his eyes, and gambled on Sarah's intuition. "Because I know you're still a prisoner here. Even if Hoggle opened the door to your cell, you can't leave the Observatory. You would have brought your armies and your demands to my very doorstep if you could. You would have more servants to attend you here, if it was more than a prison. Sarah has bound you here, but I can set you free."

"I can wait," Company hissed. "Your wife will come here seeking you eventually. In the meantime, my power grows, Jare'th. The winds and the weather obey me—you saw what I did to the stones outside. As Winter waxes here, I can raze this paltry kingdom until no stone stands on another, and bury it in snow and ice deep enough to freeze every heart. I will hurt Sarah Sophia Williams, too. If I can't bring myself from this mountain, I will bring the mountain down atop your kingdom. It will only take time."

Jareth began to laugh, one part despair, one part relief. _So it has come to this, after all._

"What's so funny?" The King of Winter asked. Jareth's laughter increased. "You've lost. I've beaten you!" He kicked the loose chess-pieces across the icy floor. "_Why are you laughing?"_ he screamed, cords straining in his neck.

"Because this is a farce," Jareth said, calming himself. "I know how this ends—with me renouncing my kingdom. My fate was sealed long ago." Jareth removed his amulet.

The chain clung to the tendrils of his hair, ripping strands out in its desperation not to be parted from him. It swung from his right hand, like a mesmer's bauble, catching the light with the time of his heartbeat. "You want this," Jareth said. "My kingship. My authority. You've always wanted it for yourself."

"Yes," John Company hissed, eyes full of wanting, tantrum forgotten. In the cold light of the television screens, the amulet seemed to take on different forms, different shapes. A crown, a bronze mask, a prisoner's key…

"I'm prepared to yield it, but I have conditions, John. You must swear that no harm will come to the people who were once my vassals. You will work no revenge against them, or me, or my family. In return, I'll renounce my kingdom. Is it a bargain? Shall I let go?" The amulet swung like a pendulum over the table.

"Yes." The King of Winter's eyes were black with covetous desire, and his hands drifted up to snatch, to steal.

"Very well. Let it be so compacted between us." He dangled the amulet from its chain, and let it drop to the tablecloth. "As long as you hold to your promise, I hold to mine. I abdicate. I am no longer King of the Labyrinth."

Thunder boomed over the dome of the mountain, bearing witness to his vow. It was done. Almost. Company reached out a trembling hand to grasp the amulet, the symbol of his power, his name, his heart. Jareth felt icy pain stab him as those cold fingers closed over the metal.

That was the moment when Jareth brought the fork down and stabbed Company through the bone-joints of his wrist, pinning him to the table. Blood, surprising in its intense redness, gushed forth and ran down the cloth, and the King of Winter screamed.

Jareth smiled.

"Concordat!" Company wept. "You've broken concordat!"

"Not at all," Jareth said, peeling the amulet out of his spasming fingers and putting it back around his neck where it belonged. It was cold now, so cold, empty of import, empty of magic, only a piece of jewelry. "Concordat applies to monarchs. I'm no longer King. I've surrendered my kingdom. But not to you."

"Cheater!" Company screamed, trying to pry himself loose. "Cheater and sneak! This isn't over!"

Jareth nodded. "You're right. Two things remain. First you must show me the door out of here." He drew his knife and let it wink under the King of Winter's eyes, guaranteeing his attention. He felt giddy, enraged, triumphant, despairing. He felt as though he had gone utterly mad. "A pity I can't kill you, Your Majesty, but I know even better than you do how impervious your flesh is to any lasting harm. I do have _this_, though," and he twirled the blade in his hand. "It will hurt you terribly if I use it on you. And I will, unless you let me out of this room right now."

"Oh, you had just better pray to all the devils of Hell you get out of here before I get loose!" Company screeched. He rocked the fork with his good hand, trying to wrench it loose, and Jareth was pleased by his own speed and accuracy. He'd driven the fork deep, and pinned nerves and tendons between the tines. But Company was right; it wouldn't hold him forever. Jareth heard the squeak of the wood as he tried to wrench himself free.

With that same agile deadliness, he used the knife to chop off three of the fingers of John Company's free hand. The iron blade sizzled against inhuman flesh and fae blood.

"Hand of glory then," Jareth said, wiping the blood off on the tablecloth and resheathing his knife. He selected the longest digit on offer and lit the manicured finger-tip with his lighter. "A candle, a candle, to light me to bed." Though the finger twisted in his hand like a bony viper, it could not extinguish itself. The hidden door was revealed by its light.

"I will kill you for this!" Company wept, still struggling with the fork with his mutilated hand.

"The second thing," Jareth said, and now his anger came in the space where madness had been, hot anger, coloring both his eyesight and his brain in tones of blood red. "There's still my ritual insult to deliver. Here we go." He drew a breath. "You are boring. You are tasteless and banal. You never make anything new, or engender fruition. All you've ever been able to do is provoke and exasperate the talented." Jareth spat, and the spittle landed against Company's cheekbone, where it sizzled like acid. He peered at Company from several angles and nodded in approval, even as the King of Winter wiped it away and screeched more imprecations and threats.

"Ah-ah," Jareth said, gesturing with his gruesome candle. "I'm not done. Listen well. The icing on this cake, now that I've glazed you, is that Sarah is pregnant with my child. Mine. She will deliver our baby in the spring. Do you understand me? Do you see what she's done? Our children will inherit everything. The Labyrinth, the world. The children of the Labyrinth will destroy you, John Company. And all of this because you couldn't leave my kingdom well enough alone."

A second reverberation shook the Labyrinth, not of thunder, but of the warm gasp of water-vapor released from ice, the scent of new flowers blooming. Jareth was surprised with himself. He'd never spoken a prophecy before.

As he left the prison-cell at the heart of the Observatory, at the heart of Winter, John Company screamed his name. If it was a curse or a plea, Jareth couldn't say. He was sure of only two things. He knew that from this moment until the end of time the King of Winter would bend all his will to finding a loophole in their bargain, and he knew that he had to get to Sarah as quickly as possible. No more time for dignity; dignity was for kings. Jareth _ran_.

* * *

Finn parried Lumarchin's overhead lunge with his longsword, taking the man's weight across the blade and then thrusting it all back. Lumarchin retreated a few feet, shaking the force with a one-handed spin that turned his sword into a silver wheel. Finn knew in the first parry that this was not going to go well for him. He'd been fighting consistently in the past few months in the city streets, and for years before that, safeguarding the Goblin City, but his opponents had invariably been inhuman, shorter or taller or moving in unusual ways. He was adaptable, but when it came to facing another human-sized swordsman, he was dangerously out of practice. And Lumarchin was good with a sword. Red Branch always were.

_It will have to be words_, he thought. _Words sharp as a blade._

"Traitor," Finnvah spat. "Are you alone, or will I have to track down Beetleham after I've done for you?"

"No," Lumarchin gasped, the pain of his crotch obvious in his stance. "I've taken care of Beetleham. Your corpse can keep his company." He lunged for Finnvah again, but his agility was far less than it should have been. Oh, Bee had done well with that kick! His own wounds hampered him, but Bee's sock to Lumarchin's balls had gone a far way to evening his odds.

"I'm your brother!" He pitched his voice for sorrow, acting, although he meant every word. "How could you betray your family?" Finnvah parried another blow and backed up, trying to keep some distance between them.

Lumarchin wiped the blood from his nose and reaffirmed his grip on the hilt of his sword. "You've never been my family. Not a brother of mine. You serve the Goblin King." He circled around Finnvah counterclockwise, and Finn held his sword in the guard position, blade angled diagonally across his body. "You're a pawn, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix. Pawn in a game between fae kings."

Lumarchin's strokes now came pizzicato style, shallow lunges meant to slash as they were parried, and the muscles of Finnvah's sides were taxed just to keep up. One stroke landed, cutting away part of his lapel. "I am a _knight_," Finnvah said, anchoring Lumarchin's blade with his hilt and wrenching it downward.

"You're the Prince of Spring," Lumarchin freed himself with a twist and cracked Finn in the hip with his pommel. Pain rolled out from the blow, grey and huge. Finnvah staggered backward, limping. "Or the King of Winter thinks you could be. He wants your head, and he's promised the rest of Red Branch amnesty when I deliver."

Finn skipped backwards. The pain was agonizing. It felt like a rusted hacksaw was scraping ice from his hipbone. _Words!_ His brain screamed. _Keep up!_ "Your father knows what you've done," he hissed between pain-clenched teeth.

"Noise," Lumarchin said, but he hesitated in his advance. "If you need to catch your breath, just say so, Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix."

_I have to push him harder_, Finnvah thought. _Cut deeper!_ He forced his voice to strength. "Your father sent me to collect you, head and coat. You've been disowned." Finn adjusted his grip on his hilt. "I'm hurt, but taking you down was important enough for our father to send me. After me, if I fail, others will come. John Company intends to destroy our House, and you've given him the excuse and the means. They all know it." He caught his breath and said, piercingly, "Even if you kill me, you will _never_ sit down at the fire with your brothers again. _Never_."

Now all niceties of proper style were cast aside as Lumarchin advanced unthinking, hammering blow after blow on his parrying sword. He was suddenly quite dangerous, in the same way as a sentient levitating lawnmower would be dangerous. Dangerous, in short, as the Cleaners. But like the Cleaners, he was completely predictable, unable to move from a single track.

It had become a fight he could win. He braced his two-handed grip on the hilt and the flat of the blade as the buffeting sword came down like solid lightning. The force of Lumarchin's hysterical, angry swings made the edge of his sword bite into his right palm, and made his left knuckles first sing, and then go numb. One moment before they became perilous to his grip, Finn parried the blow, letting their swords slide together, making many sparks. As Lumarchin's shoulders followed his sword down, Finnvah kicked him in the knee with the square of his bootheel. He felt the other man's joint blow sideways, destroyed. As the rest of him passed by, two red coats rolled closely as carrots and avocado in a California roll, Finn brought his blade across his hamstring, severing the muscles and tendons in his other leg.

He gave Lumarchin time to get to his knees before giving him a swift punch to the crotch with his pommel. At Red Branch, they called this move "winemaker," because it always liquefied the grapes. Still on his knees—and Finn respected his tenacity, he could see it was a struggle for him to stay upright—Lumarchin screamed like a rabbit in the fox's jaws and cradled his pulverized nuts. More importantly, he dropped his sword. Finn kicked it away.

A little engine of rage was turning inside Finn's heart. He hated doing this, and he hated that Lumarchin had forced him to this end. It was appalling, to have to kill a brother. He didn't think such an event existed in living memory, with the possible exception of Father Eleutherios, who was incredibly ancient. He was outraged and greatly offended.

"I'll give you time to say your prayers," Finn muttered, weak-lipped from self-disgust. "Maybe some out-of-luck god can be persuaded to receive you." He aimed his sword carefully and pierced Lumarchin through the upper quadrant of his left lung. The blade slid smooth as butter through flesh and between his ribs. It was climactic. Finn sighed and shuddered as he withdrew his blade, full of self-loathing, but also pleasure. Bitter, bitter, this pleasure, this shame. He had given a slow death, and a cruel one, where the recipient would be able to think and feel and speak until his chest cavity filled and he drowned, slowly, conscious to the last moment, in his own blood.

It was the type of wound Lumarchin had tried to kill Bee with.

Lumarchin jabbed a pair of fingers into the wound, staunching it, but only for a time. Finn was sobered by his ex-brother's pragmatism. They both knew that the outcome of this wound was certain. Finn wondered at his stoic acceptance, where he himself would have raged, or willed himself to instantly die, or perhaps begged for mercy. "There are more," Lumarchin gasped. "They know where you are. They know who you are. They're here now."

"Who are here?"

Lumarchin pointed with his free hand. "Winter's," he grunted.

Finn backed out of arm's length, almost to the perimeter of the glamourous circle of combat, and risked a glance outside. It might have been a ploy—it was an honorable defeat, to take a victor down with you, to launch a thrown dagger taken from his coat, or to blow out a bag of poisonous spores with adrenaline's last breath—but he looked, just the same.

The subway-station was relatively deserted now that the train had departed, taking Toby and the bulk of the crowd with it. Still. There were six loiterers. Four paid no attention. Two wore black suits and overcoats. One was filming the fight on camera. The other was speaking on one of those slim new phones, the oblongs of black that Bee coveted, that his eyes danced over whenever they paused in front of an electronics store.

Both were intensely interested in this fight; both could see it. But so far, neither were inclined to get involved.

_Servants of the King of Winter_, Finnvah thought_. Oh, shit. I need to get out of here._

"What do they know?" Finn asked.

"Been looking for the blond boy, too. Still don't know he's with you. Please," Lumarchin said softly. He coughed once, a burbling cough, full of pink sputum. When he continued, his voice was weaker. "Tell Father I died well." He smiled dreamily, lips turning blue against red drool.

"I will," Finn said gently. "I'm sorry it came to this." And he was, he was. In a single blow, he took Lumarchin's head off at the shoulders, a quick death in exchange for a useful piece of information. The head bounced away, spurting blood. Three strokes of his sword and he removed Lumarchin's left sleeve without cutting his flesh. A sleeve would have to do as symbolic of the whole coat. He didn't have time for anything else.

Finnvah's ears pricked up; he heard the sound of feet coming down the steps and he knew without looking that these would be more of the King of Winter's goons. He stuffed the red sleeve into his pocket and turned to face an entire ring of men in anonymous suits. Two of them leveled weapons at him; stun-guns.

"You didn't bring anything lethal?" he scoffed with false jollity. "I'm insulted!"

"Finnvarrah-Vercingetorix, you will lay down arms, and come with us," said the one in the forward position, the leader.

"No," he said cheerfully, although he'd never felt less cheerful in his entire exciting, stupid life. Twinned darts sprang forward to bite him, venom of electricity flowing through their viper's fangs. He parried, cutting the cords, even as another pair of darts launched. Less quick this time, they hit him, driving through his coat and kissing his flesh. He felt the current course through him, and it made the pain in his hip seem like a tickle. Anguish, anguish, as the electricity ate at his bones. With jerky movements and main force of will, he grabbed their tethers and pulled the darts loose. His hands were shaking, and so was the rest of him.

"Come with us," their leader repeated, calmly reloading another charge into his diabolical weapon.

Finnvah sighed deeply, the precursor to the good heavy sob he intended to have the moment he had a spare second. After everything else—the fight with Onoskelis, the confrontation with his father, convincing Bee to leave him, and then killing a sworn brother who had tried to kill him—he had had enough. He could see very clearly that he was going to lose, since it seemed electricity could do to him what cold iron could do to the fae. But he also saw very clearly that he wouldn't willingly go wherever it was they planned to take him, because it was sure to be dreadful and at least a decade out of style.

"No," he said again.

The leader leveled his weapon at him, and Finnvah saw his finger move over the trigger, coy, ready to hurt him again with a pain he couldn't ignore.

Finn used his Gift, the dark side of the blade that Onoskelis had shown him.

He looked the man straight in the eyes and gave him a vision of such potent and violent pleasure that it caused blood-vessels to burst in his enemy's head. And then, couthly, Finnvah drank that pleasure, pulling the dying man's life-force out of him as easily as a zipwire through a toy car. He felt the raw power humming inside him as Winter's minion collapsed. When another moved to stand in his place, Finnvah repeated the process. This time, deep misgivings came with the life he took. It was an evil thing he was doing, an inhuman thing, but he couldn't stop himself. It felt magnificent. It felt like a line of coke, like a golden crown, like a glorious fire that burnt away all his human frailty.

Time seemed to slow for him. He watched, contemptuously amused at the slow-motion arc of another pair of taser-darts that came stringing at him. Not wanting them, he turned them into silver clockwork crickets, and they bounced harmlessly against the thick wool of his coat.

"You should go now," he told the remainder of Winter's goons. Or did he say it? Afterward, he was never fully certain. The servant recording all of this was almost invisible in his emotional life, purposefully dim, a nonentity, and Finn ignored him. But the others, ah. They were plastic soldiers in plastic suits, full of feeling and life, like peppermint jelly squeezed into a Betsy Wetsy doll. He thought he heard them screaming as his passing idea of what they were came to abrupt reality, flesh and plastic and jam and hair all swirled together in an awful mess. The life he'd taken fed his desire and his power, a glamour so potent that it bent reality to his slightest whim, and he was helpless to stop it. It came of itself, the glamour, the Gift, and it burned reality where he touched it with his eyes.

_No_, he thought in joyful panic. _(Oh, yes.)_ Company's servants cried out in pain, flexing shiny pale plastic jaws. _I can't do this! (This is what I can do!)_

He heard other people, human voices, screaming in pain and fear. There were human beings left alive in the gulf of the tracks, full of pain and fear and madness. He couldn't see them, but he could feel them. He wanted to give them the faces of lambs and police klaxons.

_No! _he screamed at himself, and he was able to ignore them, to blot them almost entirely out of his notice. The walls were warping around him, turning into eggshells and spun-sugar confections of dirty ice. Like a child who makes a terrible, dangerous mess, he felt it would all somehow be fine if he ran away from the scene of the crime. It would fix itself in his absence, but only in his absence. _"Leave your heart behind,"_ Jareth's voice whispered. "_Your heart is a snare. Scourge out your humanity with our fire, and you'll be one of us."  
_  
"Yeah, okay," Finn muttered to that voice, his vision blurry with golden fire, heart rabbiting in his chest. It seemed like perfectly reasonable advice. He had to use his sword as a walking-stick, limping awkwardly up the steps. The sounds of moans and the stench of melting plastic and blood and peppermint were unhappy irritants, probably best left behind.

It hadn't really been Jareth who said that to him, of course. It had been his alter-ego, the Host of the Revels in the fairy ring. But they were essentially the same, reflections of each other. And his attempt to seduce Finn away from his humanity could also be interpreted as a dire warning not to do that very thing. "Right?" Finn asked himself. He paused on the steps, which had become intricate mosaics of milk-jug and bone fragments.

He turned and looked back at what he'd done with his unfettered power.

The subway station was a hellscape, plastic and jelly and blood from end to end. Some of Winter's servants had managed to run; the others were lumps of plastic dolls as if twisted by aggressive hands, his hands. Lumarchin's corpse was curled on its side, unrecognizable, clipped-off head nowhere in evidence. And the people cowering in the gap, crying in pain, and none of it remotely their fault.

_I did this_, Finnvah thought, aghast.

Exhausted, resigned, and still not certain whether he was doing the smart thing, but fairly certain that he couldn't abandon his responsibility, Finn slowly limped back down the steps, hopeful that the last vestiges of the life-force he'd stolen could be put to restoring what he'd so thoughtlessly, easily broken. The Labyrinth, Jareth, and Bee would all have to wait, dire as their need was.

Whatever happened next, he'd never give up his heart. He'd never give up his humanity. He wanted Bee to recognize him when he saw him again.

* * *

**Next… Chapter Eleven: "The Tower" ... conclusion, Act I  
**

* * *

**Author's Note:**_ ... yup. All that really happened. Jareth has abdicated; Finnvah is not dead.  
_

_Thank you very much, all the readers who responded to this story while it was on hiatus and prompted me to get this chapter out. The problem with this story (is it really a problem?) is that each chapter is huge, and even when I'm excited to get to the next part of the plot, I have to wait and take it there the long way to earn the next piece. I've never told a story this big with so many leading characters. It's a challenge._

Also, you know that show with the dragons and the games and the chair that Jareth could probably never sit in comfortably, despite all the memes to the contrary? Something about Winter arriving? Yeah. Well, in the Labyrinth, Winter has **come**, and I promise you, it's not going any time soon. But the last chapter in this act is probably on its way. Thank you again.


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